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PSYCHOLOGY AND 
DRAMATIC ART 


BY 

SISTER MARIE PAULA, Ph.D. 

M 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, COLLEGE OF MT. ST. VINCENT 

NEW YORK CITY 


WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 

THOMAS GAFFNEY TAAFFE, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, COLLEGE OF MT. ST. VINCENT 

NEW YORK 


NEW YORK 

WILLIAM H. SADLIER 

PUBLISHER 




JEHiul 0i>atat: 






ARTHUR J. SCANLAN, S.T.D. 

Censor Libr\ um 


imprimatur: 


* PATRICK J. HAYES, D.D 


Feast of the Epiphany, 1923 


Archbishop of New 70Y ^ 



Copyright , 1923, 

BY 

WILLIAM H. SADLIER 






MAR 28 1923 


Cl A698785 















GREEK THEATRE AT ASPENDUS 




































































INTRODUCTION 


T HE recent rapid development of drama from 
the thing of naught that it was a half century 
ago to the potent influence that it is today is a 
matter of common knowledge. From a tawdry 
thing that touched nothing that ever was on sea or 
land it has come to be a fairly accurate reflection 
of certain aspects of life. That so rapid a develop¬ 
ment should bring about a deluge of criticism is 
logical. Equally logical is it that, as the drama 
came into closer relation to life, criticism should see 
in it a greater insistence on what has come to be 
known as psychology. This guarded phrasing is 
deliberate, for we are living in an age of vague and 
indefinite speech. Precision has quite gone out, 
has given way to a flippant disregard of language. 
“ Psychology ” is on the tongue of every careless 
word-monger; the word is over-worn. And when 

it is so bandied about by a careless generation, one 
who uses it in its strict sense is driven to the neces¬ 
sity of explaining and defending — a curious re¬ 
versal of the normal situation. 

By psychology, in its exact sense, we mean that 
department of philosophical science which deals 
with the nature, attributes and activities of the 
human soul. But it would be reckless to assume 
that everybody who uses the term understands it 


VI 


INTRODUCTION 


in this sense. It is easy to see how a materialistic 
age, which denies, or even merely ignores the 
spiritual nature of man, will be content with a 
looser application, and in time lose sight of its 
original significance. And when the word, stripped 
of its definite meaning, creeps into the popular 
vocabulary — then farewell all precision. Here 
is an epitome of this word’s history in the last 
quarter century or thereabout. It has become a 
by-word. We hear on every hand of the psy¬ 
chology of this or that — of painting, of sculpture, 
of sport, of advertising, of salesmanship, or what¬ 
not— until we are wearied of the damnable itera¬ 
tion. The word is bandied about, tossed off the 
tongue by the unthinking, without reflection, with¬ 
out care, without remorse, until it becomes an of¬ 
fence and an irritation. 

To the man in the street the word has a savor of 
learning and confers a certain distinction on his 
vocabulary. Its novelty — for it is novel to him — 
implies its recent discovery, and the application of 
its principles to the drama must necessarily be a 
new departure. And the average reviewer of plays 
and critic of the drama is but a few degrees above 
the man in the street in intelligence, and hardly at 
all in his respect for language. To him, too, is this 
a new departure and an evidence of the superiority 
of all things modern. This misconception is due 
largely to ignorance of the history of the drama, 
and consequent failure to realize that the poverty 
of the drama of a century or so ago was due to a 


INTRODUCTION 


• • 
Vll 

process of degeneration. The ancient art had fallen 
from its high estate and had come upon evil days. 
Its regeneration, it is true, when it came, was 
marked by a rapid advance, but, after all, that 
advance marks but a partial recovery of its ancient 
glories. 

Yet even a casual consideration of this applica¬ 
tion of the principles of psychology must show that 
there is no more of novelty in it than in death, or 
marriage, or hunger, or taxes, or anything else under 
the sun. It is of the very essence of the drama. 
All drama that has any value as literature must 
concern itself with life — with the play of character 
on incident, of incident on character. It must pre¬ 
sent a moving aspect of life. To be true to life 
it must depict men and women as actuated by mo¬ 
tives consistent with their characters, as those 
characters are seen and presented by the author. 
The springs of action must be natural, and within 
the bounds of reason. The characters, to be con¬ 
vincing, must be human; their motives must be ade¬ 
quate; their speech and actions must be in harmony 
with both the characters and the situations in which 
they find themselves. To achieve all these ends the 
dramatist must have a comprehensive knowledge of 
human nature. He must be capable of depicting 
men not merely in their superficial aspects, but in 
their inmost motives. He must be capable of 
searching their souls and representing the working of 
those souls in concrete word and action, the outward 
bodily manifestation of their working. In a word, 


INTRODUCTION 


• • • 

Vlll 

he must understand psychology and be able to 
represent its results. 

This was true when Sophocles wrote CEdipus and 
Antigone; it was true when Shakespere wrote Mac¬ 
beth and Lear; it is true today when hundreds of 
dramatists are scrambling for the eminence of the 
great masters. It is a truth that has been recog¬ 
nized by every great critic of the drama, from Aris¬ 
totle to George Bernard Shaw. And this is the 
burden of this work — to demonstrate that from 
the first earnest effort to depict life by a mimic 
action, to present in concentrated form some mov¬ 
ing aspect of life, some assertion of the human will, 
the writer must have brought to the task a knowl¬ 
edge of human nature, a knowledge of the work¬ 
ings of the human soul — in a word, a knowledge 
of psychology. How well the author has accom¬ 
plished the task it is not within the province of an 
introduction to say. That would be to prejudge. 
But to declare that she has brought to the making 
of her book zeal and interest and scholarship 
is but to assert a simple truth, and to stimulate 
expectation. 

Thomas Gaffney Taaffe. 

November 19, 1922 


4 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER i PAGE 

I. Interrelations . i 

II. The Drama . 24 

III. Characterization. 51 

IV. Thematic Structure. 79 

V. Psychological Dramas.108 

VI. Dramatic Literature.124 

VII. Points of View .138 

Bibliography.148 

Index.151 


















Psychology and Dramatic Art 


i 


INTERRELATIONS 



HIS is preeminently the age of democracy. 


-*• Day by day the masses are becoming more in¬ 
sistent in voicing their rights and privileges, not hes¬ 
itating when occasion demands to make force, rather 
than reason, the arbiter of their cause. To many 
this phase of the world’s so-called progress seems 
a product of today, an aftermath of the late world 
war that has disturbed, one might almost say revo¬ 
lutionized, previously existing conditions both 
social and industrial. 

While it may be readily admitted that the masses 
are displaying their power in new fields of action, 
it is impossible to deny them the actual possession 
of that power at any stage in the world’s history. 
Man has been made king of creation and, in virtue 
of this God-given kingship, his interests and his 
views must reign paramount in the world over which 
he rules. Not wealth, nor politics, nor art, nor 
science, but human nature — humanitas — is 
man’s most interesting study; and it is only in as 
much as other things affect human nature that they 
are of any moment to the greater part of mankind. 
This statement holds good in the case of practically 


2 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

all arts and sciences, but nowhere perhaps is it 
more clearly evinced than in the relations existing 
between dramatic art and physchology, the drama 
and human nature. 

There was once upon a time a certain college 
professor so given to repeating a single phrase that 
it became the slogan of his courses: “ Be sure 
that you know what you are going to talk about 
before you begin to talk about it.” Following his 
advice, might it not be well to decide just what we 
mean by dramatic art and by psychology before 
discussing their interrelations? 

Art is defined as the skillful and 
Dramatic systematic arrangement or adaptation 
of means for the attainment of some 
desired end. 

Dramatic means pertaining to, constituting, or 
resembling a drama. 

Drama is: (i) A composition, in prose or poetry, 
usually intended to be acted upon the stage, pre¬ 
senting a story by means of characters speaking and 
acting in situations contrived to develop a plot, and 
with such accessories of scenery, etc., as are fitted 
to produce an impression of reality. 

(2) A whole body of dramatic compositions 
taken collectively and as a department of literature. 

(3) A series of actions, events, or purposes, con¬ 
sidered collectively as possessing dramatic unity. 

Taking this last meaning, one sees at once the 
close relation between human nature and the drama; 
for surely, in this sense: “ Every man’s heart is 


INTERRELATIONS 


3 


a living drama; every death is a drop-scene; every 
book only a faint foot-light to throw a little flicker 
on the stage.” 1 

Perhaps a fairly good working definition of dra¬ 
matic art would be: The skillful and systematic 
arrangement of the vital episodes of a theme, and 
the presentation of these episodes by such charac¬ 
ters and amid such surroundings as shall not put 
them beyond the possibilities of reality. 

Dr. Matthews holds dramatic art to be twofold, 
the result of a necessary union of the efforts of the 
playwright with those of the player. He maintains 
that neither can accomplish his purpose without the 
aid of the other, the achieving of a masterpiece 
requiring that the dramaturgic skill of the author 
should utilize the histrionic skill of the actor. 2 Here, 
of course, Dr. Matthews is placing the drama on 
the stage, but since great dramas, and even those 
that are not great, are usually written for theatri¬ 
cal presentation, it is only fair to consider them 
from the point of view of the playhouse. Moreover 
it is this viewpoint alone that gives Adjuncts 
the true position of dramatic art; it and 
shows how, as a mistress, she calls to Essentials 
her aid the arts of poetry, painting, sculpture, and 
music, to vivify the action which is the heart of the 
play. It would be absurd to undervalue the ex¬ 
quisite poetry, the virile prose, the deep thought, 
the wise philosophy, that have enhanced the value 

1 “Dream Life,” D. G. Mitchell. 

2 « a Study of the Drama,” Brander Matthews. 


4 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


of our great dramas; yet we insist that these are 
adjuncts rather than essentials; that the sine qua 
non of drama is the story told by such speech 
and action as may produce the impression of reality. 

“ Art cannot exist without nature, and man can 
give nothing to his fellow-men but himself. . . . 
Dramatic art requires that the characters portrayed 
by the dramatist be personated by living individ¬ 
uals, meeting as near as may be, in sex, age, and 
figure, the prevalent conceptions of the fictitious 
originals, that they assume the personality of these 
individuals, using their tones of voice, their actions, 
and their gestures.’’ 1 The dramatist must also 
add such circumstances as are needed to give a clear 
idea of his play. 

But do not these requirements necessitate a close 
study of human nature, and will not the success of 
the dramatist be measured, at least in great part, 
by his success as a psychologist? 

The reason for the existence of dramatic art 
seems both obvious and natural. Man is prone to 
mimic; when he enters vividly into the 
situations, sentiments, passions, of 
others, he involuntarily uses their action 
and gestures, sometimes their very tone of voice. 
Children at play give evidence of this tendency 
to imitate, more or less successfully, the words and 
actions of those whom they pretend to be. Have 
you never seen a little lad “ playing soldier,” armed 
with something that does duty for his father’s gun, 

1 “ Dramatic Art and Literature,” A. W. Schlegel. 


Man 

Mimetic 


INTERRELATIONS 5 

or a tiny maid “ going visiting,” draped in anything 
that resembles her mother’s gown? 

Possibly no more striking proof than the following 
can be given of the close connection existing be¬ 
tween nature and dramatic art, or rather of the 
dependence of the latter upon the former. 

With the Greeks, who hold an important place 
in ancient drama, “ the ideal of human nature was 
perfect union and proportion between all the powers 
— a natural harmony”; 1 hence, in their dramatic 
art, one finds “ an original and unconscious unity 
of form and matter.” 2 Modern dram- 

Ideals 

atists, on the other hand, being imbued 
to some extent at least with Christian ideas, are 
conscious of an internal discord which renders the 
Grecian ideal impossible; their dramatic efforts aim 
at reconciling the two “ selves ” between which man 
finds himself divided. Is not this psychology as 
well as dramatic art? 

It must be remembered, too, that the dramatist 
has to study human nature not only in his charac¬ 
ters but also in his audience. He must rivet at¬ 
tention, excite interest and sympathy, and avoid 
exceeding the ordinary measure of patience and 
comprehension. In a word, he must take so com¬ 
plete a possession of the attention of his audience 
as to make it live, for the moment, the life that he 
depicts on the stage. Does not this power of ap¬ 
peal presuppose an intimate knowledge of human 
nature and thus mark the dramatist a psychologist? 

1 “ Dramatic Art and Literature,” A. W. Schlegel. 

2 Ibid. 


6 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


If one considers the drama as a composition in¬ 
tended to be produced upon the stage, it is evident 
that it is influenced by the actor, the 
influences pj 1 y S j ca j theatre, and the audience. The 

true dramatist, according to a writer of our times, 
never feels that his work is complete until “ he has 
seen it bodied forth by actors on the stage before 
the motley masses ” 1 of a listening public. Nor 
does the same writer hesitate to say with Moliere: 
“ I accept easily enough the decision of the multi¬ 
tude, and I hold it as difficult to assail a work which 
the public approves as to defend one which it con¬ 
demns.” 2 

A playwright is sometimes reproached with hav¬ 
ing written his play to fit a special actor or actress. 

But why should he not do this? Many 

Actor ~ 

an artistic feat of the Italian Renais¬ 
sance resulted from the fact that the painter had 
to make the best of the wall space over an altar, 
or the sculptor to form his statue out of a given 
block of marble, peculiar as to size or shape. May 
not the playwright, then, seize the opportunity 
found in the personality or the ability of an actor 
or an actress? Granted that the actor depends 
upon the playwright, is not the latter also depend¬ 
ent upon the actor? Is it not the actor who inter¬ 
prets the lines of the dramatist, who vivifies them 
with appropriate action, who, in a word, creates 
the part? 

1 “ A Study of the Drama,” Brander Matthews. 


INTERRELATIONS 


7 


If one seeks for precedent in this matter of suit¬ 
ing the play —or at least the character — to the 
actor, one may find it readily enough among the 
noted playwrights of the past. Sophocles, “ su¬ 
preme artist of a most artistic race,” is said to have 
composed his chief characters for one whose name 
is not known but whose histrionic gifts spurred on 
the old Greek dramatist. The rant and violence 
of Marlowe’s “ Jew of Malta ” and “ Tambur- 
laine,” may be accounted for by the fact that the 
chief part in each of these plays was written for 
a certain Alleyne, a “ most robustious actor,” 
nearly seven feet in height and possessed of pro¬ 
portionate physical energy. It is inferred, though 
not actually recorded, that the great Shakespeare 
himself bore in mind the histrionic ability of the 
leading members of the dramatic company to which 
he belonged and for which he wrote his plays; Bur¬ 
bage seems to have “ created ” most of the “ star 
parts.” An interesting light may be thrown, too, 
upon the characters of Rosalind, Viola, Portia, and 
Beatrice, if one remembers that these maidens had 
to be personated by boys and not by women. 

If one turns to the French stage, there is Moliere 
giving to his stage people the actual physical char¬ 
acteristics of himself or others. A character to be 
played by himself has his own cough; another to 
be played by his lame brother-in-law, Begart, is 
lame; the part of the gay serving-maid in “ Le Bour¬ 
geois Gentilhomme,” is written to utilize the in¬ 
fectious laugh of Mile. Beauval, a member of his 

( 


8 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

dramatic company. For his wife, Armande Begart, 
he composes several brilliant parts, chief among 
them being Elmire in “ Tartuffe ” and Celimene in 
“ Le Misanthrope.” Nor was Moliere the only one 
to act in this way. Legouve composed “ Adrienne 
Lecouvreur ” for Rachel, and Rostand measured 
“ Cyrano de Bergerac ” to fit Coquelin. 

Not only have playwrights consulted the capa¬ 
bilities of the actor in writing the part intended for 
him, but at his suggestion they have even changed 
the play. Bulwer-Lytton practically re-wrote “ The 
Lady of Lyons ” and “ Richelieu ” in accordance 
with advice given him by the actor Macready, while 
Tennyson not only added certain lines to his 
“ Becket ” when asked to do so by the actor Irving, 
but also gave permission for such omissions 
and transpositions as Irving deemed necessary. 
Perhaps there exists no better example of a play 
written for the players than Sheridan’s “ School 
for Scandal.” Sheridan brought the play out at 
Drury Lane Theatre, of which he was manager, 
and every character is said to have been fitted to 
the one who first played it. There is even a story 
to the effect that when Sheridan was asked why 
there was no love scene for the two characters, 
Charles Surface and Maria, with whose marriage the 
comedy ends, he said that Mr. Smith, who played 
Charles Surface, and Miss Hopkins, who played 
Maria, could not make love. A playwright is un¬ 
doubtedly helped by considering special actors while 
writing a play, even though these actors be un- 


INTERRELATIONS 


9 


available for its production, for their personality 
will act as a stimulus to his invention if not to his 
imagination. Moreover we humans are far more 
alike than different, and the play written for cer¬ 
tain actors may be quite as successfully interpreted 
by others. Madame de Sevigne accused Racine of 
“ writing plays for la Champmesle, and not for 
posterity”; the accusation was probably justified 
but, as it happens, the plays that suited Mile, de 
Champmesle have been successfully interpreted by 
her successors and thus may lay claim to having 
been written for posterity as well as for the famous 
actress. 

So much for the influence of the 
actor; now a word as to that of the Theatre 
physical theatre. 

A close examination of dramatic productivity will 
convince us that the playwright composes his plays 
to suit the actual conditions of the physical theatre 
of his own time. It is impossible, therefore, to 
form a just appreciation of the dramatic artist unless 
we have a clear understanding of the chief circum¬ 
stances accompanying an actual performance of his 
play in the theatre for which it was prepared, and 
to the size, shape, and scenic appliances of which 
it had to be adjusted. How can one evaluate the 
dramatic art of Sophocles or Shakespeare, Moliere 
or Ibsen, without a knowledge of the size and shape 
of the place in which their plays were presented, 
as w y ell as of the scenic appliances available for 
such presentation? A huge theatre needs a broad 



10 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


and simple theme, heavy scenery, a plot requiring 
few changes of place; while only the artificial illu¬ 
mination and mechanical inventions of laters years 
make possible the production of some at least of our 
modern plays. 

Just how important a factor the physical theatre 
is in dramatic production, it is none too easy to 
estimate; even the keenest students of English 
drama have failed, perhaps, to grasp “ the full sig¬ 
nificance of the changes which resulted during the 
Restoration period from the introduction of painted 
scenery and artificial light.” 1 

Go in spirit to the early theatre of the Greeks 
and place yourself on one of the marble benches 
raised in tiers above the orchestra; see how small 
the actors in the orchestra appear and how im¬ 
possible it is to perceive any play of 
Greece feature; realize, too, that it is difficult 

not to lose, at least occasionally, the spoken word. 
Can you wonder that the dramatist called for 
no physical action from actors raised on lofty boots 
and wearing masks towering above their heads, 
so that their apparent stature might be increased? 
Is it strange that he should choose a plot already 
familiar to the spectators so that they might not 
lose the thread of the story, even when a sudden 
gust from the ^Egean bore away the actors’ words? 

Recall the theatre of the Romans, a modification 
of that of the Greeks. There are benches placed 
in the orchestra and the stage is raised so that the 

1 “ A Study of the Drama,” Brander Matthews. 


INTERRELATIONS 


II 


spectators may see the performance. The stage it¬ 
self is a long and narrow shelf with a high wall, 
pierced with doors and decorated with 
columns and statues, for its unchanging ome 
background. In one of these theatres, at Orange 
in the South of France, the stage was about one 
hundred and ninety feet wide, the radius of the 
auditorium was more than one hundred eighty feet, 
and there were accommodations for six thousand 
spectators. This theatre belongs to a late date, but 
the earlier Roman theatres were not unlike it in 
size and in shape. They were evidently better suited 
to pantomime and acrobatic feats than to drama 
dealing with the pathos and humor of life. Might 
their place of presentation have contributed in any 
way towards the failure of Terence’s delicately pol¬ 
ished works to please his contemporaries? Once, 
in modern times, the company of the Comedie- 
Frangaise visited Orange and gave a neo-Greek 
playlet, the “ Ilote ” of M. Paul Ferrier. The play 
had been a success at the Theatre Frangais in Paris, 
but it became absolutely insignificant in the vast 
span of the theatre at Orange. On the other hand, 
French versions of Sophocles’ “ CEdipus,” as well 
as of other massively planned Greek tragedies, were 
much more effective at Orange than they had been 
at Paris. 

We might close the discussion of Roman drama 
by quoting M. Gaston Boissier, a student of Latin 
literature, who, having visited most of the surviving 
Roman theatres, or, to be more exact what remains 


12 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


Middle 

Ages 


of them, gives it as his opinion that the plays “ were 
instinctively accommodated and appropriated to the 
place where they were to be presented.” 

Passing to the Middle Ages, one no longer finds 
the traditions of the Greek or of the Roman drama, 
but a new dramatic form evolved spontaneously 
out of the ritual of the Christian Church. Once 
more, however, the play — we use the word rever¬ 
ently — was adapted to the place. Side doors, nave, 
and chancel, were utilized in the ordi¬ 
nary church building, while large cathe¬ 
drals offered various chapels, called 
“ stations ” by the English and “ mansions ” by the 
French, to those who took part in presenting dif¬ 
ferent episodes in the life of Christ. Later on, as 
we shall see when discussing the development of the 
drama, the play or “ Mystery ” as it was called, left 
the church building for more secular surroundings. 

In the manuscript of a “ Mystery,” acted at Va¬ 
lenciennes, France, in 1541, there is a miniature of 
the stage on which the play was produced. This 
stage is a shallow platform, about one hundred 
thirty feet long, and has behind it a line of small 
houses representing each of the several “ mansions ” 
required in the course of the “ Mystery.” 

In England, the “ stations ” were set up separately 
on wagons, the acting being done in the street 
proper in front of these wagons. Even when the 
actual playhouse came into existence in England in 
the time of the Tudors, the stage, unencumbered by 
the painted scenery of today, still represented the 


INTERRELATIONS 


13 

neutral ground of the platform stage in France, or 
the street stage in England. 

Hoyle, in his “ Tragic Drama of the Greeks/’ 
claims that one of the chief characteristics of 
Shakesperian drama, “ the calm and tranquil man¬ 
ner in which the scenes were brought to a close, 
originated in the casual circumstance that the old 
English theatre had no drop-scene; the successive 
portions of a play were terminated, not by a curtain, 
but by the actors walking off the stage; and for this 
reason it was impossible to finish up with a climax, 
as is now the invariable custom.” Here we surely 
see a noteworthy effect of the influence of the phys¬ 
ical theatre on the play. Might one not claim with 
equal reason that the descriptions, found in the 
drama from the days of ^Eschylus to those of 
Shakespeare, were called for by the absence of ade¬ 
quate scenic representation? Poetic description as 
used by the writers mentioned above was helpful 
to the audience; in the hands of Ibsen or Rostand 
it would be superfluous since the scenic artist 
places before the spectators the setting of the 
modern play. 

If the playwright must fit his play to the place 
in which it is to be presented, still more must he 
adapt it to the audience by which it . 

1 i Aiidienrp 

is to be judged. The following quota¬ 
tion is from an English writer: “ Shakespeare, 
we know, was a popular playwright. I mean not 
only that many of his plays were favorites in his 
day, but that he wrote, mainly at least, for the more 


14 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

popular kind of audience, and that within certain 
limits, he conformed to its tastes.” 1 The truth of 
the statement that, within certain limits — those, 
namely, beyond which the true artist may not ven¬ 
ture — Shakespeare conformed to the tastes of 
his audience, may, we think, be proved by his plays. 
Perhaps none lends itself more readily to the proof 
than “ A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” In this 
single drama, Shakespeare caters to the lover of the 
classics by the tale of Theseus and Hippolyta, to the 
romantic by the story of Hermia and Lysander, 
Helena and Demetrius, and to the coarser people by 
the mock play of the “ Mechanicals.” Shakespeare 
was undoubtedly a genius, but that he was also a 
good business man is shown by the success that 
marked his connection with the theatre. One 
fancies that he would scarcely have denied the truth 
of Dryden’s verses: 

“ They who have best succeeded on the stage 
Have still conformed their genius to the age,” 

or of Dr. Johnson’s couplet: 

“ The drama’s laws the drama’s patrons give, 

And we who live to please, must please to live.” 

Long before Shakespeare’s time, Isocrates had 
told his pupils, the would-be orators of Greece, to 
study the people; and writers as well as speakers 
have not failed to follow his advice. Long after 

1 “ Oxford Lectures on Poetry,” A. C. Bradley. 


INTERRELATIONS 


IS 

the time of the great English writer, Moliere’s com¬ 
edies come to amuse the burghers of Paris, and 
Ibsen writes his dramas with his mind’s eye fixed 
on the narrow-minded villagers of Gunistad who 
must be roused from their moral lethargy. 

It is not to be supposed that the playwright places 
himself under any undue strain in his effort to please 
his audience; in many cases such effort may be non¬ 
existent, or at least unconscious. The playwright, 
one must remember, is his own contemporary, shar¬ 
ing the likes and the dislikes of those for whom he 
writes; hence in seeking to satisfy himself he will 
probably satisfy them. Terence owes the lack of 
popular appreciation of which he so bitterly com¬ 
plains, to his incompatibility with the only audiences 
then found in Rome; had he lived during the Italian 
Renaissance, he might have had an audience capable 
of enjoying his delicate finish and felicity of phrase. 
Lope de Vega, while apologizing for setting aside 
the so-called “ rules of the drama,” seems to have 
felt no awkward restraint in writing plays con¬ 
formed to the tastes of the Madrid populace. 

There is a distinct and indeed a very marked 
difference between the drama intended for actual 
presentation in the theatre and the drama consid¬ 
ered as a purely literary production. Goethe, in 
a warning given to Eckermann in 1826, 
expresses himself as follows: “When tage cra 
a play makes a deep impression on us in reading, we 
think it will do the same on the stage, and that we 
could obtain such a result with little trouble. But 


1 6 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

a piece that is not originally, by the intent and skill 
of the poet, written for the boards, will not succeed; 
whatever is done to it, it will always remain un¬ 
manageable.” 

The writer of the closet-drama or the dramatic 
poem lacks the craft of the theatre, and seems to 
have in mind not only the impatient spectator, 
but also the leisurely reader. He does not have 
to consider the exigencies of the theatre, the preju¬ 
dices of the manager or the audience, the financial 
returns, the requirements of the star performer; 
hence he has a freer hand than the professional play¬ 
wright and a certain independence not allowed the 
latter. It cannot be denied, however, that there is a 
touch of unreality about the closet-drama, and that 
one sometimes feels like asking its author, with Sir 
Leslie Stephen: “ Why bother yourself to make the 
actors tell a story, when it is simpler and easier to 
tell it yourself? ” 

To be welcomed by an audience the poetic drama 
must be dramatic as well as poetic; if it is, there is 
no reason to fear that it will fail where the works 
of a Shakespeare, an Ibsen, a Hugo, and a Rostand, 
have succeeded. Only let the modern playwright 
remember that the drama of today “ has cast out all 
that is undramatic”; 1 that “it has now no room 
for anything but the action and the characters.” 2 

The influence of the fine arts on the drama is prac¬ 
tically self-evident. They form an important factor 

1 “ A Study of the Drama,” Brander Matthews 

2 Ibid. 


INTERRELATIONS 


17 


in the production of the play, not only giving it a 
suitable home, but often intensifying its realism and, 
perhaps, in certain cases becoming largely respon¬ 
sible for the manner of its writing. 

The modern theatre offers to the playwright a 
stage enriched with scenic effects and mechanical 
devices, without which the production of many at 
least of the modern dramas would be utterly im¬ 
possible. While the development of these arts in 
connection with the theatre has, perhaps, all too 
frequently lessened the literary value of the play 
and even led to the catastrophe of the “ movies,” 
still it has in many instances lent itself to enhance 
the beauty and the realism of the really good drama. 
Rosalind and Orlando, already attractive on the 
Elizabethan stage, are none the less so in the staged 
Forest of Arden made possible by the development 
of scenic art. 

If the dramatic art of the Greeks owes much to 
pagan worship, that of modern times is no less in¬ 
debted to the Christian Church. Set¬ 
ting aside for the moment the dramatic ^y* ery 
elements found in the Church’s liturgy, 
a subject worthy of special discussion, consider the 
Mystery Plays, inaugurated by the Church and un¬ 
doubtedly the nucleus of modern drama. The ear¬ 
liest of these, known technically as “ liturgical 
Mysteries,” date from the twelfth, or perhaps in 
part from the eleventh century, although living 
pictures of scenes from the Gospel, such as the Ad¬ 
oration of the Magi, the Marriage of Cana, and the 


1 8 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

Death of the Saviour, had been given as early as the 
fifth century in connection with public worship. 
The “ liturgical Mysteries,” composed in Latin, 
were followed by the “ popular Mysteries,” written 
in the vernacular. The French Mystery, “ La 
Resurrection,” dating from the twelfth century, 
is regarded as the earliest extant religious drama in 
the vulgar tongue. 1 

The subjects of the Mysteries, both liturgical and 
popular, are taken from the New Testament, the 
favorite ones being the Nativity, the Passion, and 
the Resurrection of our Lord. 

Closely connected with religious beliefs, although 
not with the Church’s liturgy, were the Miracle 
Plays, which dealt with incidents drawn from 
legends of the saints. 

After these came the Moral Plays, designed to 
teach the truths of religion, not by direct repre¬ 
sentation of scriptural or legendary events or person¬ 
ages, but by allegorical means; abstract figures of 
virtues or qualities were personified in the play. 

Then the drama loses all direct and positive con¬ 
nection with the Church, but what has it not learned 
from her? And what part has not psychology, the 
Church’s knowledge of human nature, played in the 
teaching? 

Remembering that the aim of the Church has 
always been what it still is, and what it must ever 
be, namely to draw men to God, let us consider how 
well adapted to this end the Mystery Plays were 

1 “ Geschichte des Dramas,” Klein. 


INTERRELATIONS 1 9 

both as to choice of subject and manner of pres¬ 
entation. 

Three of the favorite subjects, as already stated, 
were the Nativity, the Passion, and the Resurrection 
of Christ. What do these Mysteries represent and 
how do they appeal to man? They represent weak¬ 
ness, suffering, glory, and they appeal to three of 
man’s most pronounced characteristics, — pity, 
sympathy, and emulation. 

Visualize the scene of the Nativity. How could 
one gaze upon the lovely Babe, the fair young 
Mother, the care-worn Foster-Father, deprived as 
they were of such necessaries as even the poor may 
claim, without feelings of the tender pity that is 
so akin to love? 

Bring before your mental vision Golgotha’s moun¬ 
tain; behold the 

“ .darkness as of night 

Through which there gleams the Cross-borne Christus 
dead;.” 

see, standing beneath the Cross, the Virgin Mother 
“.who gave us Christ’s humanity,” 

now offering that sacred body for our redemption. 
Surely at such a death bed as this, one’s deepest 
sympathy would go out to any mother, to any son; 
how much more readily, then, to the Mother and to 
the Son of God! 

Go with Christ to Mount Thabor, raise your eyes 
that they may follow His ascent until the clouds to 




20 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


which the wondrous privilege has been given re¬ 
ceive Him into their embrace. Is not a noble emu¬ 
lation awakened within you to tread the path, thorn- 
strewn and blood-stained though it may be, that 
leads to such a goal? 

As to the manner of presentation, it was simple, 
solemn, religious; shorn of everything that would 
distract the attention of the faithful from the scene 
of the mystery, a scene that their faith vivified and 
their love made beautiful. Ah, Mother Church is 
a past mistress in psychology, one whose knowledge 
of human nature it would be hard to equal, impos¬ 
sible to surpass! 

Probably one of the best proofs of the close con¬ 
nection existing between psychology and dramatic 
art is shown in the fact that practically 
all successful drama is based on some 
phase of human life. An idealization in 
which one sees the possibilities of human nature; 
a burlesque manifesting that nature’s idosyncracies; 
a tragedy that scarcely exaggerates actual sorrows; 
a comedy with the happy ending often, but thank 
God not always, missing in real life; make it what 
you will, the pivot on which the interest turns will 
still be the closeness of the drama’s approach to the 
heart of nature, to the lives lived by our fellow-men. 

Tragedy appeals to man because it shows him the 
moral freedom of his nature as displayed in conflict 
with his sensuous impulses. Comedy, on the other 
hand, touches his sense of humor and gratifies his 
tendency to ridicule. But whether his higher nature 


Basis of 
Drama 


INTERRELATIONS 


21 


is to be strengthened or his lower tendencies are 
to be indulged, the end must be accomplished by 
placing before him human life as it is lived in the 
world of which he forms a part. In a word, we 
repeat that “ Art cannot exist without nature, and 
that man can give nothing to his fellow-man but 
himself.” 1 

Having obtained some idea, however inadequate, 
of dramatic art, let us turn our attention to psy¬ 
chology, considering the meaning of the word itself 
and the nature of that branch of philosophy to 
which it gives its name. 

Etymologically psychology, from the Greek words 
\f/vxv an d \ 6 yos, means the science of the soul; 
it is the branch of philosophy that stud¬ 
ies the human mind or soul, taking 
mind or soul to be the thinking principle by which 
man feels, knows, and wills, and by which his body 
is animated. The inquiry into our various mental 
states and operations, — sensations, perceptions, 
thoughts, volitions, emotions, — is known indiffer¬ 
ently as Phenomenal, Empirical, or Experimental 
Psychology; the investigation into the nature of 
the mind itself, is called Rational Psychology. It 
is the Phenomenal, Empirical, or Experimental Psy¬ 
chology that bears upon the question under dis¬ 
cussion, — namely the connection existing between 
psychology and dramatic art. 

The subject matter of this psychology is con¬ 
sciousness. The various states of consciousness 


Psychology 


1 “ Dramatic Art and Literature,” A. W. Schlegel. 


2 2 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

can be observed only by introspection; that is by 
turning the mind in upon itself. It is, therefore, 
to the adjudication of this faculty of internal ob¬ 
servation that the first as well as the last appeal must 
be made in every psychological problem. This 
mode of investigating psychical phenomena, known 
as the subjective or introspective method, may be 
supplemented, however, by the objective method. 
This objective method occupies itself: (i) with the 
results of other men’s use of introspection, as far as 
these results can be gathered together: ( 2) with the 
products of the human mind as embodied in lan¬ 
guage; products made known by the sciences of 
philology and literature; (3) with the study of the 
human mind as manifested at different periods of 
life and in different grades of civilization; such man¬ 
ifestations being found in the manners, religions, and 
social institutions of different nations. The study 
of the human mind as manifested at different epochs 
and under varied conditions, is known technically 
as the historical or genetic method. To put it 
briefly, psychology teaches us to study human 
nature: (1) as found in ourselves, by introspection; 
(2) as found in others, by observation. The sensa¬ 
tions, the passions, the intellect, may be studied at 
leisure behind the closed door of self; they may be 
studied in others only when the self-door is opened 
by look, or word, or action. 

But these sensations, these passions, this intellect, 
are the factors in that human life upon which the 
drama is based. It is evident, therefore, that dra- 


INTERRELATIONS 


23 


matic art cannot part company with psychology 
unless the drama is to be deprived of that impres¬ 
sion of reality which crowns it with success. 

In modern times, man’s great interest is man him¬ 
self, and the words of Terence might well be chosen 
as the slogan of our race: “Homo sum: humani 
nihil a me alienum puto. ” 1 What is it that keeps 
Shakespeare’s plays ever new if not their human in¬ 
terest? Macbeth is still found in many an ambitious 
man; King Lear in many a fond and foolish father. 
Numberless other plays, too, having none of Shake¬ 
speare’s art to recommend them, have kept the 
boards because of the vital question they discussed, 
or because of the characters clothed with some ex¬ 
trinsic interest, that they portrayed. 


Suggestive Questions 

1. What is dramatic art? 

2. What is the sine qua non of drama? 

3. To what extent is the dramatist dependent upon the actor? 

4. To what extent is the dramatist influenced by the physical 

theatre ? 

5. To what extent is the dramatist influenced by the audience? 

6. What is the chief characteristic of the closet-drama? 

7. What formed the nucleus of modern drama? 

8. Define experimental psychology and state its subject 

matter. 

g. Distinguish between the introspective and the objective 
method of investigating psychical phenomena. 

10. Prove that a close connection exists between psychology 
and dramatic art. 

1 Terence — Heaut., 1, 1, 25. 


II 


THE DRAMA 


HEN we name the drama we state its most 



V V essential requirement — action. The con¬ 
nection of the Greek dpdpa — so like our English 
word — with the verb 8pav is, of course, obvious. 
Now while the dictionary translates this verb by 
“ to do, to go,” Homer uses it — the expression is 
“iOv 8papdov,”in the sense of the Latin curro; 1 this 
would imply that the word expresses not only action 
but quick action. Without unnecessary hair-split¬ 
ting over the exact meaning of a Greek verb, we 
are safe in saying that, whether the action be swift 
or slow, it must be present if we are to have drama. 
This action, however, is not mere movement or 
external agitation; rather is it the expression of a 
will that knows itself. The French critic, M. Ferdi¬ 
nand Brunetiere, maintained that the drama must re¬ 
veal the human will in action; that the central fig¬ 
ure in the play must know what he wants and strive 
for it with incessant determination; this, according 
to his theory, is the law of the drama. 2 The proof 
is worked out rather ingeniously. The drama dif¬ 
fers fundamentally from other literary forms, there- 

1 Od. 23, 207. 

2 “ Law of the Drama,” a preface to the “ Annales du 
Theatre” for 1893. 


24 



SCENE FROM IPHIGENIA 
College Campus, Mt. St. Vincent, New York 







































THE DRAMA 


25 

lore it must have some essential principle of its own; 
this principle must be the law of the drama, the 
obligation to be accepted by all writers for the stage. 
An examination of a collection of typical plays of 
every kind, — tragedies, comedies, farces, — shows 
the starting point of each to be the same; some one 
central character wants something, and this exer¬ 
cise of volition is the main-spring of the action. 
In many of the plays, the central character is 
thwarted in attaining his — or her — desire either 
by a stronger will or by a combination of circum¬ 
stances; but it is just this clash of contending 
desires, or this assertion of the human will against 
strenuous opposition, that makes the successful play 
whether ancient or modern. 

M. Brunetiere goes farther still. The law of the 
drama once grasped, he says, it helped to differen¬ 
tiate more precisely the several dramatic species. 
If the obstacles against which the central figure, be 
it hero or heroine, has to contend are insurmount¬ 
able, Fate or Providence or the laws of nature, and 
the end of the struggle is likely to be death since the 
one contending is defeated in advance, — then we 
have tragedy. If the obstacles, being only social 
conventions or human prejudices, may be overcome 
and the hero has a possible chance of obtaining his, 
— or the heroine her, — desire, we have the serious 
drama. Let the obstacle be changed, - 
the conditions of the struggle equalized, 
and there is comedy. Make the ob¬ 
stacle of a lower order, an absurdity of custom for 
instance, and one has farce. 


26 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

M. Brunetiere finds a confirmation of his theory- 
in the fact that the drama has most amply flourished 
when the will of a nation has stiffened itself for 
some great effort. Greek tragedy, he tells us, is 
contemporary with Salamis and the Spanish drama 
with the conquest of the New World; Shakespeare 
had reached manhood when the Armada was re¬ 
pulsed; Corneille and Moliere were made possible 
by the work of Henry IV. and Richelieu; Lessing 
and Goethe and Schiller came after Frederick the 
Great. 

While M. Brunetiere was the.one to declare this 
law of the drama, not a few of his predecessors had 
at least caught sight of the theory which he so 
sharply isolated. Voltaire asserted, in one of his 
letters, that every scene in a play should represent 
a combat. Stevenson declared that “ a good serious 
play must be founded on one of the passionate 
cruces of life, where duty and inclination come 
nobly to the grapple.” Schlegel held that tragedy 
deals with the moral freedom of man, which can be 
displayed only “ in a conflict with his sensuous im¬ 
pulses.” Coleridge thought that accidents ought 
not to be introduced into tragedy, since “ in the 
tragic the free will of man is the first cause.” 
Goethe went so far as to say, in “ Wilhelm Meister,” 
that, while the hero of a novel might be passive, 
the hero of a play must be active, since “ all events 
oppose him, and he either clears and removes every 
obstacle out of his path, or else becomes their 
victim.” 


THE DRAMA 


2 7 


But Brunetiere has gone farther back than all 
these writers in his statement of the law of the 
drama. He has gone to the first and the foremost of 
dramatic critics, no other than Aristotle, the “ mas¬ 
ter of all that know,” who asserted that “ without 
action there cannot be a tragedy; there may be 
without character.” 

It is true that practically all these statements 
refer to tragedy rather than to drama in general; 
but if action is necessary to tragedy, surely it is 
even more indispensable to the other dramatic 
forms. Tragedy offers scope for such subtle char¬ 
acterization and such eloquence of impassioned 
diction as might win at least a half-hearted pardon 
for lack of sufficient action. Such characterization 
and diction could hardly find place in serious drama 
and would be altogether ludicrous in comedy; hence 
the greater dependence of these forms on the action 
of the play. 

Seen in the light of Brunetiere’s law, one better 
understands Sarcey’s theory that in every story, 
fit to be set on the stage, there are certain episodes 
which must be shown in action and cannot, without 
dissatisfaction to the audience, be narrated by the 
characters. It might be well to recall just here that 
M. Sarcey, a very practical critic, passed all his 
evenings in the theatre and deduced his theories 
from his observation of the effect of the acted 
drama upon the audience. Sarcey calls the unerring 
intuition as to what the audience will expect to 
actually see, the test of the playwright. Now what 


28 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


are these essential scenes if not the episodes marked 
by acute dramatic conflict, the interviews showing 
clash of volitions, in a word, to use Stevenson’s 
phrase, the scenes in which “ passion must appear 
. . . and utter its last word ” ? 

All the great dramatists have done instinctively 
what Brunetiere and Sarcey declare to be necessary 
and, if one pauses for a moment, a procession of 
plays, ancient as well as modern, will probably pass 
before one’s mental vision to illustrate the point. 
Moreover a careful analysis of the impression made 
upon ourselves by the plays that we have witnessed, 
will enable us to test personally the validity of the 
principles laid down by the two French critics. 

Besides the law already enunciated, there are cer¬ 
tain essential conventions which govern the drama. 
These result chiefly from the conditions of theatrical 
performance. The time for the giving of a play is 
limited; therefore the dramatist must select the 
vital elements of his theme and compact his dia¬ 
logue. Not only must he condense, but he must 
also clarify the speech of his characters. 
Every character in a play is supposed to 
be capable of saying just what he means in the few¬ 
est possible words, always using the actual vocabu¬ 
lary in keeping with his part. In “ Julius Caesar,” 
for instance, Shakespeare makes the heroic figures 
employ blank verse, the less distinguished use a 
stately rhythmic prose, and the populace sink into 
the everyday speech of the common folk. 

With regard to non-essential conventions, one is 


Conventions 


THE DRAMA 


29 

always willing to accept them if the acceptance is 
helpful, although in many cases one can well dis¬ 
pense with them. The world of today has become 
accustomed to realistic scenery and characteristic 
costumes, but the Greek and the Elizabethan en¬ 
joyed the drama without either of these accompani¬ 
ments. Even in modern times, Henry Irving once 
gave the “ Merchant of Venice ” in the mess-hall 
at West Point, on a flag-draped platform devoid of 
scenery; and Edwin Booth and his company ap¬ 
peared in “ Hamlet ” at Waterbury, all wearing 
their traveling clothes because their stage costumes 
had miscarried. 

There are other non-essential conventions which 
one might discuss but their discussion would scarcely 
lead us nearer to the point that we wish to reach. 
The banishing of one such convention, the mono¬ 
logue, or soliloquy, may, however, help us on our 
way. This convention, found convenient by the 
playwright and acceptable to the audience for two 
centuries or more, was hastily discarded in the later 
years of the nineteenth century, the spectators cry¬ 
ing out against it as “ an outworn trick unworthy 
of a self-respecting workman.” They may accept 
the reasoning of the clever man who justified his 
habit of talking to himself by saying that he liked 
to talk to a man of sense and to hear a man of 
sense talk, but they will not admit that it is natural 
for a man to express his feelings aloud, even under 
the stress of strong agitation, in a soliloquy of a 
hundred lines or more. Here is the keynote, you 


30 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

see; the play has to be natural, it must have at 
least the semblance of Reality. And now we have 
reached the port for which we set sail, although 
our skiff has, perhaps, been taken from its course 
occasionally by the currents of digression. The 
drama must have action, a story developed natu¬ 
rally, that is in accordance with human nature, and 
the audience will accept only such non-essential 
conventions as make the play clearer or more real¬ 
istic. But how can a dramatist meet these require¬ 
ments, which necessarily imply a close knowledge 
of human nature, unless he studies that nature? 
Hence the connection existing between psychology 
and dramatic art is once more made evident. 

With regard to the beginnings of the drama, Mr. 
Rappoport tells us, rather poetically, that “ In the 
garden-land of religion the source of dramatic art 
wells up, dividing into many streams, which, widening 
as they run along, traverse the provinces of life.” 1 
As a matter of fact we know that from the primitive 
ages there have been dramatic elements, not only 
in religious worship, but in games, sports, and other 
mimetic performances. In India, the drama was 
held to be a gift bestowed by Brahma upon Muni 
the Wise. It was called “ nataka ” from “ nata,” 
to dance. This name would seem to place its origin 
in the dance, accompanied by songs, performed in 
honor of some god or gods. In Egypt, the famous 
“ Book of the Dead ” is, perhaps, nothing but a re¬ 
ligious drama, the chief role being played by the 

1 “ The English Drama,” A. S. Rappoport. 


THE DRAMA 


31 

dead and the other roles by the gods. The dramatic 
nature of the early worship of the Jews is attested 
by the service in the Temple, the singing of psalms 
and responses, the dancing before the Ark, and the 
various ceremonies performed by the High Priest. 
In Greece, dramatic performances were closely con¬ 
nected with religious worship, and the cult of Diony¬ 
sius may be regarded as the source of the Greek 
drama. 

One must remember, however, that while mimicry 
is as old as the human race, and while the dramatic 
tendencies in life and literature resulted 
in various nations in definite literary ^ r a a c ^ a of 
forms given theatrical presentation, the 
drama, properly so called, took an important place 
in literature much later in the development of civili¬ 
zation. In classical times it was considered one of 
the three divisions of poetry, the other two being 
the epic and the lyric. This distinction may still be 
applied in a general way although many of our good 
dramas are written entirely in prose. The Greeks 
divided the drama into tragedy and comedy, but 
no such division is found in the Indian, the Chinese, 
or the Medieval drama. Again there are dramatic 
forms outside the strict limits of either tragedy or 
comedy; for instance the Satyric Drama of the 
Greeks, the Morality of the Middle Ages, the Tragi¬ 
comedy and the Pastoral of the Renaissance, the 
modern French drama, and the so-called, but often 
miscalled, melodrama. 

One would like to discuss Indian drama, to say 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


Greek 

Drama 


32 

a word about “ Sakuntala,” the most famous of 
Indian dramas, written by Calidasa, the greatest of 
Sanskrit dramatists, and translated by Sir William 
Jones in 1789; it would be interesting, too, to 
see how the Chinese, a later development than the 
Indian, differs like it from European drama; but 
such discussion and investigation would lead too 
far afield. The Greeks must be our first guides in 
our search for the connection between psychology 
and dramatic art. 

When we turn to the Greeks for guidance, they 
naturally place before us their three great drama¬ 
tists, ^Eschylus, Sophocles, and Euripi¬ 
des. ^Eschylus is grand, severe, often 
harsh; Sophocles has a finished sym¬ 
metry, a harmonious gracefulness; Euripides is 
soft and luxuriant in style. Comparing dramatic 
art with that of sculpture, one agrees with Mr. 
Schlegel in calling ^Eschylus its Phidias, Sophocles 
its Polycletus, and Euripides its Lysippus. 1 

iEschylus, considered the creator of tragedy, is, 
it is true, prone to bring the gods into his plays, as 
if it were too great an effort always to paint mere 
men; yet his works are not lacking in human in¬ 
terests, nor do they fail to show his knowledge of 
human nature, at least in its terrible moods. 

Sophocles avails himself of the interposition of 
the gods only when such interposition is absolutely 
necessary. He takes everything in the most human 

1 “ Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature,” A. W. 
Schlegel. 


THE DRAMA 


33 

sense but shows by the beauty and nobility of his 
characters of what he thought human nature 
capable. 

Considered by himself, Euripides deserves praise; 
taken in connection with the history of dra¬ 
matic art, he merits censure. Through him came 
the decline of tragic poetry, and even the ancients, 
admittedly not over-prudish, condemned him for 
the seductive invitations to sensual love found in his 
plays. He was probably the first to make the pas¬ 
sion of love of capital importance as a dramatic 
motive. 

Greek comedy, like Greek tragedy, sprang from 
the worship of Dionysus, being only a development 
of the frolic and buffoonery that marked the har¬ 
vest festival. 

Only one writer of the Old Comedy has come 
down to us, Aristophanes, whose comedies abound 
with criticisms on the Athenian life of his day. 
Political and intellectual tendencies, fashionable 
follies, even men of note, were attacked by this 
writer who, however much he may have offended 
by the matter of his works, still showed the skill 
of a finished artist in their form. 

Ancient critics assume the existence of a Middle 
Comedy, characterized by careful avoidance of 
political or personal matters. Modern critics con¬ 
sider the works classified as “ Middle Comedy ” 
to have been merely tentative efforts marking the 
transition from the Old to the New Comedy. 1 This 

1 “ Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature,” A. W. 
Schlegel. 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


34 


Roman 

Drama 


New Comedy, the ancestor of our modern comedy 
of manners, was a faithful picture of life. So true 
was this that Aristophanes, apostrophizing Menan¬ 
der, the chief representative of this New Comedy, 
exclaims; “ Oh life and Menander! which of you 
copied the other? ” Unfortunately the works of 
Menander survive only in fragments and in the 
translations and imitations of the Roman Terence. 

The early development of the Roman drama was 
probably similar to such development in Greece, 
but as no portions of the early folk 
drama, the Atellan farces (Fabulae 
Atellanae) have survived, it is impos¬ 
sible to note the peculiarities that mark the national 
development. In point of fact, Roman drama is 
known only through three writers, Terence, Plautus, 
and Seneca. 

Terence, who has himself been imitated, not 
only imitated but even translated the Greek Me¬ 
nander. Plautus, too, followed the New Comedy 
of the Greeks but gave to his characters a coarse¬ 
ness and a directness of humor suited to Roman 
taste. The Roman comedies became models and 
incentives for Renaissance writers of drama, and 
their stock characters and lively intrigue still in¬ 
fluence the drama. Seneca, whose tragedies were 
probably never acted, was the model for the hu¬ 
manists, and his was the main classical influence 
upon modern tragedy. 

In the latter days of the Empire, drama yielded 
to bloody spectacles and indecent pantomime, nec- 


THE DRAMA 


35 

essarily attacked by the early Fathers of the 
Church after the triumph of Christianity. The Ro¬ 
man theatre, as an institution, practically ceased 
and its dregs, the despised mimes, became the an¬ 
cestors of the traveling entertainers of the Middle 
Ages, handing down the old traditions of clownery 
and farce. 

The Church was undoubtedly the chief source 
of Medieval Drama, although minor ones are 
found in the games and sports of the time, as well 
as in the amusements offered by the popular en¬ 
tertainers, direct descendants of the Roman mimes. 
In France, where alone the Medieval 
Drama departed extensively from re- Drama ™ 1 
ligious themes, we find besides the Mys- 
tere and the Miracle, the Farce and the Sottise. The 
last two were affected by the popular entertainers. 

In Italy, the Sacre Rappresentazioni held the 
place of the French Miracle. 

In Spain, Germany, and England, there was prac¬ 
tically the same development from the Liturgical 
to the full-fledged Mystery or Miracle Play. 

After this, didacticism and fondness for allegory 
led to the introduction of the Moral Play, an ad¬ 
vance in dramatic production since it required the 
invention of a plot and centered interest on a moral 
conflict. 

Early in the sixteenth century, there arose a new 
kind of performance known as the Interlude or the 
Moral Interlude. As its name indicates, — ludus, a 
play, and inter, between, — it was a dialogue similar 


36 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

to the Latin “ Disputationes,” the German carnival 
plays of Hans Sachs, and the French “ Querelles.” 
It was occasionally performed in the intervals of 
banquets or entertainments, and perhaps between 
the acts of the long, and sometimes dreary, Mys¬ 
tery or Moral Play. In character it was farcical, 
light, and humorous. 

Taking medieval drama as a whole, one finds 
it servile in its adherence to sources and apparently 
incapable of making any distinction between a nar¬ 
rative and a dramatic fable. Again it failed to see 
the absurdity of putting on the stage much that 
was not essential to the acted story, it permitted the 
presentation of all kinds of action, and it delighted 
in discordant combinations of comic and tragic. 

The Humanists sought to impose upon the drama 
the rules of classic writers, but they took as models 
Terence, Plautus, and Seneca, not the Greek dram¬ 
atists. The imitations of the Humanists, however, 
lacked both the authority of the great masters and 
suitability to the then current theatrical conditions; 
hence there arose a conflict between humanism and 
medievalism. Yet this jostling together of Neo- 
Latin plays, vernacular imitations of Latin writers, 
miracle and moral plays, interludes and farces, was 
not without result. It led ultimately to recognized 
standards and great achievements. 

In England and in Spain, the national drama 
carried on medieval traditions but it was also in¬ 
debted to classical fecundation. In Italy, the Corn- 
media dell’ Arte, the Comedy of Masks, held popu- 


THE DRAMA 


37 

lar favor, and a new genre, the Pastoral, more dis¬ 
tinctly national in character, succeeded the Rap- 
presentazione Sacra. In France the 
drama both religious and secular, at- 
tained to a high degree of development 
during the Middle Ages, and this dramatic eminence 
is still maintained. 

Turning our attention more exclusively to Eng¬ 
lish drama, we find medieval forms, variously 
modified, surviving until about 1552. As soon as 
the drama became an element of popular amuse¬ 
ments, comedy took foremost rank. This is readily 
understood. Comedy, of the average type, is more 
easily invented than tragedy. It appeals to a com¬ 
moner intelligence, deals with more familiar 
motives, makes slighter demands upon the capacity 
of the actors, and attracts more powerfully an un¬ 
instructed audience. Tragedy, too, it must be re¬ 
membered, is more in need of models, and requires 
a study of the old classics; it came into England 
under the tutelage of the Italian Renaissance. Yet, 
in the very first English tragedy, “ Gorboduc,” 
which was considered classical, the three unities 
were not observed. As time went on the defenders 
of classicism found it impossible to impose the clas¬ 
sic rules upon the playwrights of the people, who 
refused to submit to these rules on the ground that 
they hampered their flights of imagination. The 
Historical or Chronicle Play is the earliest form of 
the English national drama and treats of the events 
of some one reign. The “ spontaneous national 


38 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

dramatic instinct,” 1 however, was at work in the 
plays dealing with everyday matter and the popular 
dramatists drew the material for their works from 
“ the stirring events and the realistic scenes of 
contemporary life.” 2 Marlowe, who brought blank 
verse to the theatre and raised the prevailing popu¬ 
lar forms of play writing to dramatic and literary 
effectiveness, disregarded classical rules. His plays 
are the violent and spectacular, but always dra¬ 
matic, expression of human passion. Lyly gives us 
the artificial and courtly play; Greene, the romantic 
comedy with its averted tragedy and its sentimental 
treatment of love. But the primary aim of these 
three playwrights, as well as of their contempo¬ 
raries, was to tell a story so as to please an audi¬ 
ence. Even the dramatic career of Shakespeare, 
great genius that he is, was undoubtedly condi¬ 
tioned by the demands of the London theatre of his 
day, and perhaps, one might almost say surely, the 
most potent factor in the enduring success of his 
plays, is found in the evidence they give of his 
knowledge of human nature. 

In more modern days, the drama has become com^ 
placent in adapting itself to the temper of the 
times. * Romanticism finds a powerful 

Drama 11 rival * n realism > aa d the “ Social ” 
drama discusses the problems offered 
and the reforms needed by prevailing social 
conditions. 

1 “ The English Drama,” A. S. Rappoport. 

2 Ibid. 


THE DRAMA 


39 


American dramatists have been, in the main, 
imitators of European models, but the work of a 
chosen few seems to bespeak a more brilliant future 
for our national drama. 

The present century has witnessed a remarkable 
development in the drama of both Europe and 
America, together with changes in stage presenta¬ 
tion absolutely revolutionary. The revolution of 
the theatre is still in process and no one can say 
with certainty what the outcome will be. Every¬ 
where there is evidence of great popular interest in 
the drama on the one hand, and of a desire to suit 
the theatre to the proletariat on the other. Poten¬ 
tialities are found in the drama which are not pos¬ 
sessed by either the short story or the novel. Un¬ 
doubtedly Ibsen has influenced this extremely 
modern drama in no small way. Realistic study of 
current manners, intellectual discussion of social 
problems, symbolic interpretations of life, each 
owes something to the Scandinavian. Yet all the 
while Romance keeps its hold on the stage and of 
late Poetry has been trying to regain its one-time 
place. But mark well that the twentieth century 
drama has had no uniform national development; 
on the contrary, each nation seems to be striving to 
express its own peculiarities and aspirations. 

As to the American interest in the drama, 
Brander Matthews calls it “ a sudden and unex¬ 
pected burgeoning. ... A quarter of a century ago 
people did not read plays, . . . because there was 
a divorce between literature and the drama; and 



40 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

with few exceptions the plays that were readable 
were not actable while those that were actable were 
not readable. . . . Probably the change in the 
attitude of the public must be ascribed primarily 
to Ibsen; his plays were drama and they were liter¬ 
ature; they were readable and they were actable. 
But while Ibsen may have been the exciting cause, 
there was also a predisposing condition; the time 
was ripe for a revival of interest in the drama as an 
art.” 1 

There is no more significant manifestation of 
this revival in the United States than the springing 
up of the so-called Little Theatres, in 

Theatres sma ll towns and remote villages, as well 
as in larger cities. Free from the com¬ 
mercial spirit that makes the probable sale of 
tickets a factor to be reckoned with in the produc¬ 
tion of a play, they can serve, as Mr. Matthews 
puts it in the article already quoted, “ as proving 
grounds and experiment stations.” 

Not only have they presented plays, having a 
certain interest although not universal in appeal, 
but they have brought the acted play to many a 
place where otherwise it would at most have been 
known only in print. Dwellers in large cities are 
not always the best judges of what is really worth 
while in the drama, or indeed in many other things 
that require education as well as book learning, 
understanding as well as memory. True, owing to 

1 “ The Case of the Little Theatres,” B. Matthews; The 
North American Review, Nov. 1917. 


THE DRAMA 


41 


the poverty of their resources, these Little Theatres 
have been forced to devote most of their energies 
to the one-act play. But after all the one-act play 
has its artistic abilities as well as its obvious limi¬ 
tations. Augustin Eugene Scribe began with the 
composition of one-act plays; so did Sir Arthur 
Pinero and Henry Arthur Jones and Clyde Fitch. 
If this same poverty of resources has restricted 
them to simple stage-settings and amateur actors, 
is it altogether to be regretted? Has not the first 
stimulated the imagination of the audience and the 
second offered to incipient dramatic talent possibil¬ 
ities of development hardly to be obtained under 
other conditions? 

The melodrama has come to be regarded as so 
bastard a form of art that it requires courage even 
to discuss it, but is it not the form in 

• j • j . 1 j 1 ill Melodrama 

which it is expressed that should be 
condemned rather than the thing itself? Ottavio 
Rinuccini invented the term melodrama toward the 
end of the sixteenth cenury, forming it from the 
Greek words /ueXos and bpapa, melody and action. 
In its first application, it related to opera; just how 
it has come to stand for such productions as “ Nel¬ 
lie, the Beautiful Cloak Model,” or “ Convict 999,” 
one can hardly conceive. Certain it is, however, that 
from the loose application of the term there has 
arisen a misunderstanding as to the true elements 
in melodrama. 

If one considers the relation between music and 
drama, he will readily see the point from which 


42 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

melodrama may be said to start. The most bril¬ 
liant moments of an opera are those that involve 
the characteristic elements of a glaring play. The 
actions of the characters are broad and such sub¬ 
tlety as the production possesses depends more 
upon the music than upon the play. Many an 
opera high in favor as such, would be little more 
than a despised melodrama if deprived of its orches¬ 
tration. The dominant feature of the melodrama 
is situation, the difference between it and the “ le¬ 
gitimate drama,” a term invented by Douglas 
Jerrold in 1832, being largely a matter of accentu¬ 
ation. In earlier melodramas the stories were con¬ 
sistent and the characterizations human. Note the 
genial Irish atmosphere pervading the most sensa¬ 
tional of Dion Boucicault’s plays, and the heart 
interest so romantic as to cover the most daring 
adventures with the gloss of possibility. But such 
writers of today’s melodrama as Owen Davis and 
Theodore Kremer deal with situations only, quite 
irrespective of the possibilities of life, their sole 
aim apparently being to deaden with sensationalism 
the logical sense of the spectator. 

There is this to be said about the audience ap¬ 
preciative of melodrama, — it must be shown 
everything; never tell what has happened but let 
it actually take place on the stage. 

Just here we pause and — wonder. Is there not 
a tendency at present in the legitimate drama to let 
things happen on the stage? We are thinking of 
“ The Girl of the Golden West.” In one of the 


THE DRAMA 


43 

scenes, you remember, the girl hides the hero from 
the pursuing sheriff, and as this hero lies above in 
the rafters his blood drips down upon the floor. 
Now what we are wondering is this. If Mr. 
Kremer, let us say, had been the author of the play? 
would it have been accepted by the two-dollar 
audience who took it as coming from the pen of 
Mr. Belasco? Perhaps we are crassly ignorant, 
but it does seem to us that the difference between 
“The Girl of the Golden West,” softened to suit 
the classes by some attempt at subdued acting, and 
“ The Girl of the Golden West ” offered to the 
masses without the softening process, lies wholly 
in the matter of accentuation. 

Poor Melodrama, how many sins against the 
drama you have been made to cover! At least let 
us give you credit for one good point; you never 
mix your colors; white remains white and black 
remains black; virtue is rewarded and vice pun¬ 
ished; in spite of your glaring and numerous faults, 
the morality that you teach is often superior to 
that taught by the legitimate drama. 

Does the “ Movie ” — we beg its pardon, the 
“ kinetoscopic theatre,” — belong to the drama? 
It would seem so; at least a recent 
writer on American drama devotes an 
entire chapter of his book to its discus¬ 
sion. 1 Whatever be its worth or its place in the 
world of play acting, its popularity makes it a fac¬ 
tor with which one is forced to reckon. Perhaps 

1 “ The American Dramatist,” M. J. Moses. 


44 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

the best hall-mark of this theatre is found in the 
terminology of those who frequent it. “ Othello ” 
is “ run through ” in seventeen minutes, “ Romeo 
and Juliet ” is 915 feet in length, and “ Macbeth ” 
835 feet. Eventually one might come to speak of 
the “ Movie ” as the play of miles and minutes. 

Like the melodrama, the motion-picture is not 
an evil thing per se;‘ judiciously used it can be very 
educational. Our government at Washington has its 
film department and employs the moving-picture 
to record military manoeuvres and naval displays; 
so, too, the New York Museum of Natural History 
has experimented with the cinematograph to picture 
the flight of birds and the habitat of bears. 

As an amusement, the moving-picture lacks the 
human element; for this reason, Mr. Moses, in the 
book already quoted, speaks of it as “one of the 
greatest enemies to the theatre, which is a live in¬ 
stitution, presenting plays in human fashion.” 
Again he tells us that “ The moving-picture has 
undoubtedly hurt the theatrical business. It steals 
the spoken drama and reduces it to motion. Every 
road company has its tale to tell of business ruined 
by the kinetoscope; every vaudeville house is 
forced to open its doors to celluloid drama.” 

Reading this, one better understands the im¬ 
portance of an article written by Brander Matthews 
in 1917. 1 Mr. Matthews’ views so often agree with 
our own that we may be pardoned for using his 
article rather freely. 

1 “Are the Movies a Menace to the Drama?” B. Matthews, 
The North American Review, March, 1917. 


THE DRAMA 


45 

“ A French critic,” he tells us, “ is credited with 
asserting that ‘ the skeleton of every good play is 
a pantomime ’ — a saying which is not quite true 
although it contains a large proportion of truth. 
In Hamlet and Macbeth and Othello the visible 
actions of the characters almost interpret them¬ 
selves; and a performance of any one of the three 
plays would probably hold the attention of the av¬ 
erage spectator even if he were so placed that he 
could not benefit by the dialogue.” 

True, but would his grasp of the story be as strong 
as if the spoken word had called upon the intellect to 
co-operate with the sense of vision? Has any one but 
an anatomist ever preferred a skeleton to a living 
body of flesh and blood? Mr. Matthews voices our 
opinion when he gives the restriction of the mov¬ 
ing-picture to mere pantomime as a reason why it 
will never really be a rival of the drama, since “ the 
picturization of the finer kinds of drama will always 
be inadequate and unsatisfactory.” Again he says: 
“ All kinds of melodrama the movie can do better 
than the regular theatre; certain kinds of farce also. 
But comedy and tragedy are wholly beyond its 
reach; and equally unattainable by it are the social 
drama and the problem play. It is true, of course, 
that the moving-picture director can take comedy 
and tragedy, social drama and problem play, and 
that he can translate them on the screen; but what 
has he succeeded in presenting? The mere story, 
the empty sequence of events, void of nearly all 
the humanity that gives it meaning.” 


46 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

It seems to us that a — if not the — great dan¬ 
ger of the motion-picture lies in the fact that “ the 
reel asks no co-operation of the intellect for the 
enjoyments of the events thrown upon the screen.” 1 
America has long been noted for its labor-saving 
inventions, but is it quite wise to add to the list one 
that saves the labor of thinking? Newspaper head¬ 
lines give us our knowledge of current events, re¬ 
views furnish us with our views of current litera¬ 
ture; must the eye alone be again taxed for 
our non-speaking acquaintance with the drama? 
No wonder so many of us wear spectacles! 

Let us hope that, if the “ Movie ” has come to 
stay, it will at least keep to its own field, realize its 
own limitations, and thus do away with any pos¬ 
sibility of rivalry between itself and the drama, 
which is, to quote Mr. Matthews once more, “ the 
noblest of the arts precisely because it does demand 
the co-operation of the intellect at the very moment 
when it is appealing to the emotions and gratifying 
the senses.” 

We have tried to trace the drama, however 
briefly and imperfectly, from its earliest to its lat¬ 
est form, and all along the way we have had for 
guides Psychology and Dramatic Art,— a knowl¬ 
edge of the human nature of characters and audi¬ 
ence and the dramaturgic skill to use this knowledge 
to good purpose. At every step we have seen how 
man influences the drama; what about the drama’s 
influence on man? We are prone to forget that 

1 “ The Story of a Play,” Howells. 


THE DRAMA 


47 

a man’s amusements, as well as his occupations, 
have a share in the fashioning of both his mentality 
and his morality; that the theatre is a social insti¬ 
tution and that, as such, it has a moral accountability 
to society. Example holds first place in the teaching 
paraphernalia and imitation is one of the most ob¬ 
vious factors in development. The child uses the 
faculty of imitation when he first repeats, after his 
mother, the names of Jesus and Mary; the dying 
saint makes use of the same faculty to utter his 
“ Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.” 

Again, man is given to emulate his 
fellows. You remember St. Augustine’s mama 
“ Why cannot I do what others have 
done? ” 

Granting the force of example, and imitation, 
and emulation, one readily sees the power for good 
or evil that dramatic representations exercise on 
the lives of those who witness them. The respon¬ 
sibility for the drama seems to us threefold; true, 
the dramatist writes the play, but is he not guided 
in his writing by the knowledge of what the theat¬ 
rical manager will accept, and is not the manager 
influenced in turn by knowing what the public will 
go to see? One must always bear in mind that while 
drama is itself an art, the theatre — and even the 
writing of plays — is often a mere commercial en¬ 
terprise. The question is not “Will the play raise 
the intellectual or the moral standard of the audi¬ 
ence? ” but “ Will it pay? ” The greatest hope 
of the theatre, therefore, rests today, as it rested 


48 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

yesterday and as it will rest tomorrow, with the 
people themselves. Whether you approach the 
drama from its physical or technical or economic 
side, the public is always concerned, and it deter¬ 
mines largely the tendency of the dramatist, 
although he, if he be big enough, may in turn de¬ 
termine its cast of thought. Moreover the drama 
lies close to life, it is the very art of representing 
life; and this art has been used both by the pagan 
Greek and by the Christian Church for social pur¬ 
poses. But drama not only draws from life; it also 
reacts on it. Hence it would be well for the modern 
dramatist to remember that “ there are other ways of 
remedying society than by treating solely of con¬ 
ditions as they are. . . . Condition is simply the 
back-drop of life; man’s soul and woman’s soul 
are the primary consideration.” 1 Yet there must 
be a touch of sympathy with condition, as well as 
human passions. A play dealing wholly with 
family life as it is conceived by the foreigner will 
hardly find favor with an American audience, nor 
will a play dealing entirely with American institu¬ 
tions be better received in a European theatre. 
Dramatic form has ever been moulded to receive 
the content, changing as the content changed; dra¬ 
matic treatment of the mysteries of life has been 
modified to accord with the highest individual ac¬ 
tion towards those mysteries. Fate, concern for 
the individual soul, heredity, social regeneration, — 
on the mimic stage as in real life, each has in turn 

1 “ The American Dramatist,” Montrose J. Moses. 


THE DRAMA 


49 


held sway; and the dramatist, who has drawn his 
inspiration from the actual or the thought life of 
his fellow-men, has in turn left upon those men the 
impress of his own impressions and conceptions. 
These are the days of problem plays. God grant 
that in dealing with these problems our dramatists 
may not ruin the virtue that they profess to save. 
Of those plays that make no such professions, we 
do not care to speak; surely rotten fruit and faded 
flowers should be banished from the garden of true 
art. We Americans are learning from European 
drama to make use of the deep and vital problems 
of human nature and to exalt them above mere 
effectiveness of situation. The great world-move¬ 
ment is touching the shores of our own dear land 
and asking us, as it is asking every other nation, to 
solve these problems. Ah, if we use the drama to 
help us in the solving, let us use it as a power for 
good. If it stands for the true in doctrine and for the 
moral in action, it will be such a power. It will 
be an uplift to the people whom it amuses, placing 
before them nobler ideals than those that they 
would otherwise know, and showing them by the 
pictured life of stageland the possibility of living 
in accordance with these ideals. Then indeed will 
the drama be a civic institution worthy of support, 
well deserving its plebiscite. 

Suggestive Questions 

1. Define the word “drama.” 

2. What sort of action does the drama require? 


50 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


3. Show how the several dramatic species differ. 

4. What does M. Sarcey call the test of the playwright? 

5. Distinguish between essential and non-essential dramatic 

conventions. 

6. Name three Greek dramatists. 

7. Name three Latin dramatists. 

8. What was the earliest form of English national drama? 

9. What is the influence of the so-called “Little Theatres?” 

10. Is the motion-picture an unqualified evil? 


Ill 


CHARACTERIZATION 

T HE action of a drama ought always to be 
probable. This probability, however, is not 
that of actual or historical experience, but rather 
a conditional probability; in other words, it is the 
consistency of the action with the characters, and 
of the characters with themselves. It is evident, 
therefore, that upon the invention and the conduct 
of his characters, the dramatist must expend a large 
proportion of his labor; his treatment of them, no 
less than his choice of subject, conception of action, 
and method of construction, will determine the 
effect which his work produces. The importance 
of this truth has been fully realized and there is no 
aspect of dramatic art under which its advance is 
more perceptible than under that of characteriza¬ 
tion. While many causes have* probably contri¬ 
buted to bring this about, the chief one is undoubt¬ 
edly to be found in the increased opportunities 
offered for mankind’s study of man. 

Again, in the early Greek theatre, the distance 
of the actor from the spectator, the use of the 
masque, the necessary raising and hence conven¬ 
tionalizing of the voice, all tended to make 
the character a type rather than an individual. 

51 


52 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

Later Greek and Roman drama, with a persist¬ 
ency illustrative of the force of habit, limited the 
range of characters to accepted types. These 
examples, as well as national tendencies of mind 
and temperament, inclined the dramatists of the 
Roman nations to attach less importance to char¬ 
acterization than to action and construction. It is 
in the Germanic drama, above all in Shakespeare, 
that the individualization of characters has been 
carried to its furthest point, and that the signifi¬ 
cance of a character has been allowed to work it¬ 
self out in closest connection with the progress of 
the dramatic action to which it belongs. 

However the method and scope of characteriza¬ 
tion may vary under the influence of different his- 
Essentiai torical epochs and different tendencies 
Require- or tastes of races or nations, the laws of 
ments this branch of dramatic art are every¬ 
where based on the same essential requirements. 
What interests us in men or women in real life, or 
in impressions formed of historical personages, is 
that which individualizes. Hence a dramatic char¬ 
acter should have distinctive features sufficiently 
marked to excite one’s interest; with these features 
the conduct of the character must be consistent 
and its participation in the action of the play must 
correspond. It is the task of the dramatist, there¬ 
fore, to conceive a character — whatever may have 
suggested it to him — under the operation of par¬ 
ticular circumstances; this conception, growing and 
modifying itself as the action of the play pro- 


CHARACTERIZATION 53 

gresses, determines the totality of the character. 
While the likeness of a given character to a real or 
a historical personage may concern its success, it in 
no way influences its dramatic effect. The drama is 
not a photographic apparatus. 

Distinctiveness is a primary requisite in all dra¬ 
matic characterization but it is necessarily elab¬ 
orated in such characters as contribute more to the 
action of the play, the fullness of its elaboration 
being reserved for heroes or heroines. Many expe¬ 
dients lend their aid to the attainment of the higher 
degrees of distinctiveness. Much may be gained 
by the significant introduction of a character; 
Sophocles has Antigone dragged in by the watch¬ 
man. Again the use of contrast marks character 
clearly; notice how Shakespeare employs it in the 
case of Othello and Iago. Nor does he confine him¬ 
self to direct antithesis, for in Julius Caesar, Cas¬ 
sius is a foil to Brutus. 

Consistency between the conduct and the dis¬ 
tinctive features of the character does not imply 
uniformity. Aristotle himself tells us that there 
are characters which, to be represented with uni¬ 
formity, must be presented as uniformly un-uni¬ 
form. Such characters are not of frequent occur¬ 
rence in Greek tragedy; in modern drama, good 
exemplars are found in Hamlet in Shakespeare’s 
tragedy of that name, in Weislinger in Goethe’s 
“ Gotz,” and in Alceste in Moliere’s “ Misan¬ 
thrope.” 

Perhaps some light might be thrown on the sub- 


54 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

ject of character making from M. Coquelin’s de¬ 
scription of his way of creating a character. 
“ When I have to create a part,” he says, “ I begin 
by reading the play with the greatest attention five 
or six times. First, I consider what position my 
character should occupy, on what plane in the pic¬ 
ture I must put him. Then I study his psychology, 
finding out what he thinks, what he is morally. 
I deduce what he ought to be physically, what will 
be his carriage, his manner of speaking, his ges¬ 
tures. These characteristics once decided, I learn 
the part without thinking about it further; then, 
when I know it, I take up my man again, and clos¬ 
ing my eyes, I say to him, ‘ Recite this for me.’ 
Then I see him delivering the speech, the sentence 
I asked him for; he lives, he speaks, he gesticulates 
before me; and then I have only to imitate him.” 

Could one find a better illustration of the close 
connection existing between psychology and dra¬ 
matic art? 

A play needs an interesting story for immediate 
success; it must be peopled by characters that lin¬ 
ger in one’s memory if it would attain to lasting 
popularity. Nations and times cause taste in story 
to vary, but human nature is much the same in all 
nations and at all times. “ It is by veracity of 
character delineation, by subtlety of psychology, 
that great plays are great. It is by this power of 
creating living and breathing human beings, recog¬ 
nizable fellow-creatures with ourselves, that a play¬ 
wright establishes his title to be considered a dram- 


CHARACTERIZATION 5 5 

atist. If he lacks this power, if he cannot leave be¬ 
hind him characters that the next generation will 
recognize and relish, then his reputation is fleeting; 
he exists by virtue of his plots only, and these the 
playwrights of the next generation will surely make 
over in accord with the changing taste of their 
own time.” 1 

The fact that a character lives on in our memory 
long after the play has ceased to mean anything 
to us, may very readily be proven by personal ex¬ 
perience. For instance, which one of us cares 
particularly for the “ Winter’s Tale,” but again who 
can remain insensible to the appeal of the eternally 
human love of Perdita and Florizel? In our times, 
too, the central incidents of the “ Merchant of 
Venice ” seem almost puerile, but “ Shylock is 
an unforgettable figure, as alive today as when he 
first strode on the stage of the Globe Theatre.” 2 

Characterization, whether taken in its purely 
technical meaning or as derived from dramatic 
action properly so called, gives a very true sum¬ 
mary of man’s qualities. Yet this is no easy task, 
for the dramatist is limited in his means of presen¬ 
tation. His characters can be made known to us 
only by what they say and do; they must speak and 
act for themselves with no word of explanation 
from the one who created them. The stage is guilt¬ 
less of comment or foot-note or sign post. 

Perhaps this very limitation, however, has urged 

1 “A Study of the Drama,” B. Matthews. 

2 Ibid. 


56 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


the really great dramatist to a deeper study of psy¬ 
chology and has thus enabled him to put upon the 
stage human beings thoroughly capable of making 
themselves known. If we were to note the imag¬ 
inary characters who answer most readily to the 
roll call of memory, we would probably find that 
many of them come from the world of drama. 
This is eminently true of Moliere’s characters. 
One may criticize the plot of his plays, but his 
characters are most carefully conceived and elab¬ 
orated. He may tell us nothing of how they came 
to be what they are when they emerge into view, but 
looking at them and listening to them as they play 
their parts, we know all that we need to know about 
them. 

Here, as in many other aspects, Shakespeare and 
Moliere are at one. When, in “ As You Like It,” 

shake- we meet J acc l ues the Forest of Arden 
speare and and hear him moralize at large and 
Mollere bandy repartees with a clown, we know 
him at once as we know one whom we have often 
met even though we have no idea of who he is, 
where he comes from, or why he is in the greenwood. 
It is quite possible, indeed, that Shakespeare him¬ 
self would have found some difficulty in answering 
these questions. 

Mrs. Jameson has written a charming but fanciful 
book called the “ Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Hero¬ 
ines.” The writing of the book was surely a work 
of love, intended to honor the poet by showing the 
interest with which his heroines inspired us; but 


i 


CHARACTERIZATION 


57 

it seems to us that they were created only for the 
life they live on the stage and that this life needs 
neither a “ before ” nor an “ after.” 

Paradoxical as it may appear, it is still true that 
while the characters of a play can be only what the 
plot permits them to be, the story in turn is what 
it is because they are what they are. 

Stevenson is said to have once told a friend 
that he knew only three ways for making a story; 
the first way was to start with a group of char¬ 
acters and devise a plot to exhibit them; the second 
to begin with the plot and fit characters to it; 
the third, to subordinate both plot and characters 
to a special atmosphere, which was to be realized 
and made impressive. The third method is imprac¬ 
ticable for the theatre, since atmosphere does not 
suffice to hold the attention of an audience, but 
the other two are quite available for the playwright 
and have been freely used by him. The first 
method has produced admirable results in the com¬ 
edies of Moliere and the second in the Greek trag¬ 
edies. However, it would seem to matter little 
whether the dramatist begins with plot or charac¬ 
ter, since it is the result that decides the case for 
or against him and not the method by which it was 
obtained. 

Looking at this question of character from an¬ 
other point of view, it is evident that an actor’s 
interpretation of a part may sometimes differ widely 
from that intended by the playwright. A rather 
interesting example of this is given in one of 


58 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

Christian Reid’s novels, “ The Daughter of a Star.” 
A playwright, John Stafford, has written a play, 

Character “ The Queen of Cypress,” in which the 
interpreta- titie-role is played by Violet Lestrange, 
tion a star actress. Her presentation 

of the character, while leaving the letter of the 
play comparatively untouched, completely changes 
the spirit. The delicate, poetic conception of Cat- 
erina, the Queen of Cypress, entirely disappears, 
and she becomes a mere creature of passion. Later 
on an accident happens to Violet Lestrange and the 
part is played by her daughter, Sylvia, who in¬ 
terprets the character as it had been conceived by 
Stafford. In the hands of Sylvia, the Queen of 
Cypress is not the mature enchantress using the 
seductive arts of her womanhood to accomplish her 
end, but a girl in all the radiance of youth, appeal¬ 
ing to man’s higher nature; a girl in whom the glow 
of awakening passion is as unconscious as her 
charms are irresistable. 

Another good illustration, and one founded on 
truth, concerns the character of Lady Teazle in 
Sheridan’s “ School for Scandal.” The part was 
written for Mrs. Abington who saw in it only the 
woman of fashion. After Mrs. Abington retired 
from the stage, Mrs. Jordan played the part as that 
of a country-girl aping the airs and graces of a fine 
lady. The second interpretation, probably never 
intended by Sheridan, was quite as effective as the 
first and proved that creations may have possibili¬ 
ties unknown to their creators. As a matter of 


CHARACTERIZATION 


59 

fact it is sometimes impossible to know just how 
an author wishes a given role to be played and the 
question must necessarily be decided according to 
the opinion of the actor. Take for instance Jacques 
in “ As You Like It.” We have already said that 
when we meet him in the Forest of Arden we know 
him as one whom we have met before. This is 
quite true; but it remains for the actor to determine 
whether Jacques is to be classed with those cynics 
who are, alas, too familiar to most of us, or with 
the humorists whom we meet too rarely. He simply 
talks and his words may be consistently used by 
the character interpreted in either way. That is 
the wonderful thing about Shakespeare’s charac¬ 
ters; they are living human beings who, like our¬ 
selves, take on different aspects in the eyes of 
different observers. 

There is another aspect under which character¬ 
ization must be considered. It sometimes happens 
in a play that a given character may seem in one 
place to contradict himself as presented elsewhere. 
This is the crucial moment for the playwright. If 
he is a mere “ characterizer ” he will be unequal to 
the test and his play will fall to the level of melo¬ 
drama or farce. If he is a psychologist, he will be 
able to convince his audience that there is only a 
seeming contradiction, no greater, indeed, than 
those contradictions we often find in our own char¬ 
acters as well as in those of the people with whom 
we live. 

Elaborating a thesis already stated, namely that 


60 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


the characters are only what the plot permits them 
, to be, and the plot what it is because of the char¬ 
acters, Mr. Galsworthy points out that “ charac¬ 
ter is situation.” In other words, the situation 
exists because some character is what he is and 
hence has an inner conflict or clashes either with 
another character or with his own environment. 
Naturally if you change the character you will 
change the situation; or if you bring more people 
into the scene, their very presence, by affecting the 
character already involved, will necessitate a 
change in the situation . 1 

It is evident that a playwright must know his 
characters intimately if he would produce a play 
that is worth while. Of what use is a 
Situation dramatic situation, however great its 
possibilities, unless one can work his 
characters up to and into it? The situation, you see, 
must be treated, not as though it were created by the 
dramatist, but rather as the creation of the people 
who are in it. But suppose the characters are not 
capable of creating the situation? Then they must 
be worked at until they are. If the dramatist is 
leading up to one important scene, he must seek 
such characters as will make this scene, not only 
possible, but natural. If, on the other hand, he is 
chiefly interested in characterization, he is forced 
to let his characters themselves model the central 
situation, as well as all that precedes and all that 

1 “ Some Platitudes Concerning Drama,” John Galsworthy, 
Atlantic Monthly, Dec. iqio 


CHARACTERIZATION 


6l 


follows it. An amusing anecdote illustrative of the 
way in which the writer of plays is ruled by his 
characters, is related by a certain professor in one 
of our American Universities. The scene is laid in 
London. A critic met a well-known dramatist on 
the Strand. The dramatist looked worried. 
“ What’s the matter,” queried the critic, “ anything 
gone wrong? ” “ Yes. You remember the play I 
told you about, and that splendid situation for my 
heroine?” “ Yes. Well?” “Well! She won’t 
go into it, confound her, do the best I can.” “ Why 
make her? ” “ Why? Because if I don’t there’s 
an end to that splendid situation.” “ Well? ” 
“ Oh, that’s just why I’m bothered. I don’t want 
to give in, I don’t want to lose that situation; but 
she’s right, of course she’s right, and the trouble 
is I know I’ve got to yield.” 1 One may feel quite 
sure that he did yield and that the heroine had the 
situation into which she was willing to go. 

Not only must character and situa¬ 
tion be fitted to each other, but the Motivation 
motivation of character must be clear, 
adequate, and plausible. 

First, it must be clear. From the moment that 
an audience fails to understand why a character 
says what he is saying, or does what he is doing, 
the play weakens. William Archer objects to 
Tennyson’s “ Becket ” on this ground, and main¬ 
tains that the poet has missed both the historical 
interest and the psychological problem of his theme. 

1 “ The Theatrical World for 1893,” W. Archer. 


62 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

“ What was it that converted the Becket of 
Toulouse into the Becket of Clarendon — the 
splendid warrior-diplomatist into the austere prel¬ 
ate? The cowl, we are told, does not make the 
monk; but in Lord Tennyson’s psychology it seems 
that it does. . . . The social and political issues 
involved are left equally in the vague.” 1 To the 
argument that the fact of the poet’s not writing as 
a partisan is a proof of his art, Mr. Archer answers, 
in the same article: “ The poet is not impartial; he 
is only indefinite. We are evidently intended to 
sympathize, and we do sympathize with Becket. 
simply because we feel that he is staking his life on 
a principle; but what that principle precisely is, 
and what its bearings on history and civilization, 
we are left to find out for ourselves.” 

Secondly, the motivation must be adequate. 
Here we may cite an instance in which even so great 
a master as Shakespeare has failed. “ The Two 
Gentlemen of Verona ” shows both Proteus and 
Valentine in love with Silvia. Valentine threatens 
the life of Proteus when he discovers the latter’s 
perfidy but forgives him for the asking. Again 
Proteus, finding that the page who has been fol¬ 
lowing him is Julia, turns at once from Silvia to 
her: 

“ What is Silvia’s face, but I may spy 
More fresh in Julia’s with a constant eye? ” 

This slip of Shakespeare’s might be taken as an 
offence against plausible as well as against adequate 

1 “ The Theatrical World for 1893,” W T . Archer. 


CHARACTERIZATION 63 

motivation. Not only is there an absence of 
sufficient reason for the sudden change in the feel¬ 
ings of both Valentine and Proteus, but this 
change does not accord with their characterization 
in the earlier scenes of the play. 

We would like to atone for our temerity in dar¬ 
ing to criticize the immortal Bard by admitting that 
such a slip does not often occur in his 
works; on the contrary, one of the chief spare's 
elements of his genius is to discern in Characters 

z&tion 

his material, whether history or fiction, 
the eternal principles of human conduct. Perhaps 
no other dramatist has looked deeper into the heart 
of human nature, or learned to know more thor¬ 
oughly its characteristics and its tendencies. A 
well-known German critic says of him: “ If the 
delineation of all his characters, separately consid¬ 
ered, is inimitably bold and correct, he surpasses 
even himself in so combining and contrasting 
them, that they serve to bring out each other’s 
peculiarities. This is the very perfection of dra¬ 
matic characterization; for we can never estimate 
a man’s true worth if we consider him altogether 
abstractedly by himself; we must see him in his 
relations with others. . . . Nobody ever painted as 
truthfully as he (Shakespeare) has done the facil¬ 
ity of self-deception, the half self-conscious hypoc¬ 
risy towards ourselves, with which even noble 
minds attempt to disguise the almost inevitable 
influence of selfish motives in human nature. . . . 
His comic characterization is equally true, various, 


64 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

and profound, with his serious.” 1 Is not this high 
praise for Shakespeare’s knowledge of psychology 
as well as of dramatic art? But after all, 
Shakespeare has small need of the critics’ praise; 
his characters best tell his worth. 

His tragedies abound in characters so true to 
nature that they seem real human beings rather 
than the creation of their author. Take for in¬ 
stance Othello, in the play of that name. He is 
noble, frank, confiding, grateful for Desdemona’s 
love; a man who spurns danger, a leader of an 
army, a faithful servant to the State. But he is 
tamed only in appearance, and that by the desire 
of fame, by foreign laws of honor, by the milder 
and nobler manners of those with whom he lives. 
The mere physical force of his passion — a sensual 
jealousy — puts to flight in a single moment his 
acquired habitual virtues, gives the upper hand to 
the savage over the civilized man, and shows “ the 
wild nature of that glowing Zone which generates 
the most ravenous beasts of prey and the most 
deadly poisons.” Has not the dramatist touched 
a note which rings true in our everyday life? Need 
we go farther back than our own century to dis¬ 
cover, beneath the veneer of culture, the savage 
nature of him who yields to passion? 

So much has been said and written about the 
character of Hamlet that one hesitates to add even 
a passing word; to us Hamlet seems the embodi- 

1 “Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature,” A. W. 
Schlege! 










CHARACTERIZATION 


65 

ment of self-hypocrisy, a man constantly seeking 
in some far-fetched scruple a pretext to conceal his 
want of determination. 

The character of Macbeth, probably Shake¬ 
speare’s most faithful study of human nature, we 
shall consider when we discuss the tragedy itself. 

Shakespeare’s portrayal of human nature is not, 
however, confined to his tragedies, but is found 
as well in his other works. 

“ Antony and Cleopatra ” offers two very human 
characters. In the man is a mingling of great 
qualities, weaknesses, and vices. He yields now to 
violent ambition and again to ebullitions of mag¬ 
nanimity. He sinks into luxurious enjoyment only 
to feel shame for his aberrations. He makes resolu¬ 
tions worthy of his better self to have them ship¬ 
wrecked by the seductions of a woman. The 
woman is made up of pride, vanity, inconstancy, 
true attachment, seductive charms, — a type that 
has caused the ruin of many a modern Antony. 

Notice, too, Shakespeare’s knowledge of human 
nature as shown by his making the king, in “ Henry 
V.”, adopt the policy of preventing internal dis¬ 
turbances by foreign conquests, — a policy not too 
ancient to be modern. 

In “ King John,” Constance is a real mother, 
plunged into despair because of the danger which 
threatens her son; and Arthur, pleading his cause 
with Hubert, has all the winsomeness of childhood. 

Although Shylock, in “ The Merchant of Venice,” 
has, like Hamlet, been over discussed, the char- 


66 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

acter must be mentioned as a masterpiece of psy¬ 
chological study. Made an object of ridicule by 
those who first played the part, Shylock later on 
was so presented as to excite our pity for himself 
even while we condemned his deed. In our own 
day, he is being acted as the ordinary Jew of the 
Ghetto and his compatriots are applauding the 
naturalness of the presentation. Surely Shake¬ 
speare has come very close to “ the heart of 
nature ” when each may read into the part his 
own conception of the typical Jew. 

The women characters of the poet are many and 
varied and show a wonderful knowledge of fem¬ 
inine nature — for a man. On the whole, however, 
they lend themselves less readily to the subject we 
are discussing — the connection between psychol¬ 
ogy and dramatic art — than do his male char¬ 
acters. One reason for this may be found in the 
fact that while he often took his men from real 
life, as in the case of the heroes of Rome, he had 
frequently to fall back upon his superb creative 
power in fashioning his women, particularly if they 
were classical heroines. Or was it the poet’s chiv¬ 
alry that caused him to refrain from laying upon 
his fair ladies too heavy a burden of faults of char¬ 
acter or conduct? England in Shakespeare’s time 
was Protestant in name but not yet in nature. 
Catholic customs still prevailed; among others one 
that we, too, follow although many of us have lost 
sight of its origin. It is the custom of showing cour¬ 
tesy to women because of the great courtesy that 


CHARACTERIZATION 6 7 

God Himself showed one Woman when He asked 
her to become His Mother. 

Once you begin to talk about Shakespeare it is 
difficult to stop. Surrounded by his works you feel 
as Ali Baba felt in the cave of the Forty Thieves; 
everything is so rich and beautiful that you hardly 
know what to choose. This being the case, let us 
take it for granted that we have said enough about 
Shakespeare’s characters, at least for the present, 
and see if we can discover what it is, besides his 
knowledge of human nature, that makes us know 
his people for what they are. 

Three tendencies in real life make it difficult to 
know man, either as he has been or as he is. The 
first, a spirit of partisanship, meets us in history, 
in biography, in imaginative literature, in society. 
We see men through the atmosphere of nation, sect, 
politics, or even in the littleness of class or coterie. 
The second, a spirit of simulation, shows us men 
as they seem rather than as they are. If it cannot 
wholly disguise character, it at least perverts or 
restrains it. Man attempts to deceive, not only 
others, but even himself with respect to the motives 
actuating his conduct. The third, the spirit of 
egotism, makes man’s individuality his universe; 
he judges life exclusively from his own view point. 
Nay, so strong a passion is egotism that even “ gen¬ 
ius ” is sometimes swayed by “ self.” Would 
it be too daring to suggest that this “ self ” is 
quite visible in the works of Dante and of 
Milton ? 


68 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


Shakespeare is singularly free from these three 
tendencies of partisanship, simulation, and egotism. 
He gives us people in their genuine, concrete ex¬ 
istence; people who, though the creatures of all 
time, are none the less true to their own eras. Only 
one class of human beings does he fail to under¬ 
stand, — religious, whether monks or nuns. Yet 
this in no wise detracts from his knowledge of hu¬ 
man nature. How could one who saw the Catholic 
Church but from without understand the inner life 
of even her lay members, much less that of her 
children who have entered into the sealed garden 
of the religious state? It appears to 
us that the conception of the charac¬ 
ter of Friar Lawrence, in “ Romeo and 
Juliet / 7 would alone suffice to refute all arguments 
in favor of Shakespeare’s being a Catholic. The 
most ignorant member of the Church knows too 
much about the priesthood to picture any priest as 
Shakespeare depicts the Friar — who is, neverthe¬ 
less, supposed to be a holy and learned man. Let 
him speak for himself. 

In Act IV., Scene I., he says to Juliet, after he has 
suggested a possibility of her marriage to Paris: 


Friar 

Lawrence 


“ Hold, then: go home, be merry, give consent 
To marry Paris. Wednesday is to-morrow; 
To-morrow night look that thou lie alone, 

Let not thy nurse lie with thee in thy chamber; 
Take thou this phial, being then in bed, 

And this distilled liquor drink thou off; 

When, presently, through all thy veins shall run 


CHARACTERIZATION 


69 


A cold and drowsy humour 


No warmth, no breath, shall testify thou livest. 

And in this borrowed likeness of shrunk death 
Thou shalt continue two and forty hours, 

And then awake as from a pleasant sleep. 

« • • ************** 
Then, as the manner of our country is, 


Thou shalt be borne to that same ancient vault, 
Where all the kindred of the Capulets lie. 

In the mean time, against thou shalt awake, 

Shall Romeo by my letters know our drift; 

And hither shall he come, and he and I 
Will watch thy waking, and that very night 
Shall Romeo bear thee hence to Mantua.” 

In Act V., Scene I., Brother John having failed to 
deliver to Romeo Friar Lawrence’s letter, the Friar 
says: 

“ Now must I to the monument alone. 

Within this three hours will fair Juliet wake; 

She will beshrew me much, that Romeo 
Hath had no notice of these accidents; 

But I will write again to Mantua, 

And keep her at my cell till Romeo come.” 

Consider these words for a moment. Would a 
good and wise priest counsel a girl of fourteen — 
that, we believe, is usually held to be Juliet’s age 
— to be deceitful and disobedient? Or would he 
place before her a scheme that might easily mis- 







70 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

carry and result in real rather than in feigned 
death? We think not. 

Be that as it may, however, there are certain 
things that no Franciscan friar could do — even 
if he would — without being dismissed from his 
order. He could not have a lady visit him in his 
cell, much less reside there until claimed by her 
lover. 

Perhaps not now, some one will say, but Shake¬ 
speare wrote of olden times when discipline was less 
strict. Make the times as old as you please, the 
discipline less strict if you will; you can never find 
a change in the vow of chastity taken by every 
priest and monk and nun. Mind you we do not 
say that this vow has not been broken. Many have 
found too galling the sweet yoke of Christ, too 
heavy His light burden. If Shakespeare had made 
Friar Lawrence a recreant monk, however much we 
might regret the introduction of the character, we 
could not deny the possibility of its truthfulness. 
But Shakespeare makes him a good and holy friar 
and in this lies the harmfulness of his work. God 
help our prospects for converting our non-Catholic 
brethren if they were to judge our priests by this 
impossible friar! Shakespeare a Catholic? Never! 

When he deals with the merely human, Shake¬ 
speare is indeed a master. He turns, as it were, 
an intellectual x-ray on the soul of man, laying bare 
even those secret recesses which the soul, perhaps, 
never sees itself, or at best only glimpses in its all 
too rare moments of honest self-examination. But 


CHARACTERIZATION 


71 

when there is question of the things of God, of the 
fundamental requirements for a sacerdotal or a 
religious life, then the master becomes the pupil 
who has yet to learn the letters of the language used 
by Faith. 

While it would be difficult, if not impossible, to 
find a more psychological maker of characters than 
Shakespeare, one must not think that characteriza¬ 
tion ended with him. On the contrary, it is along 
this very line that drama has made its greatest 
progress. This will be easily understood if we 
remember the ever increasing tendency to adapt the 
stage to life, not life to the stage; for since men and 
women make real life what it is, since they are, 
in other words, its most important factors, so, too, 
must they attain chief distinction in the represen¬ 
tation of this life on the stage. 

The passing of the soliloquy and the aside have 
made it more difficult for the dramatist to let his 
characters describe themselves. Description of one 
character by another may sometimes be used but 
it requires persuasive acting to make it appear 
natural. Unquestionably the best 

Ioscn 

method of characterization is by action. 

Ibsen, in the first draft of “ A Doll’s House,” shows 
clearly the tactlessness of Krogstad by making him 
speak familiarly to Helmar, formerly his school fel¬ 
low but now his employer; the petty vanity of 
Helmar is also illustrated by the irritation which 
this familiarity causes. 

Bernard Shaw’s characters strike one as belong- 


72 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


ing rather to him than to themselves. He wants no 
“ moral attitudes ” ; but after all re$l 
“ men and women live and move and 
have their being in these moral attitudes. ... By 
being shown as constantly capable of stripping off 
the very texture of their inner life, of living an un¬ 
interrupted series of moments characterized by the 
highest Shavian insight and sagacity, they cease to 
be independent creatures at all, and become the 
mere images of men as reflected by the hard, bright, 
unshadowed surface of their creator’s mind. ” 1 Mr. 
Lewisohn is willing to admit, however, that a few 
ordinary mortals have stolen into the “ astonishing 
assemblage ” of Mr. Shaw’s characters: Crampton 
in “ You Never Can Tell,” Roebuck Ramsden in 
“ Man and Superman,” and the General in “ Getting 
Married.” 


Galsworthy 


John Galsworthy’s power of charac¬ 
terizing, effected by means of his dia¬ 
logue, which is held by some critics to be the best 
dramatic dialogue in our language, rises sometimes 
to admirable heights. Good examples of this power 
are found in Mrs. Jones in “ The Silver Box,” 
several of the working-men in “ Strife,” Cokeson in 
“ Justice,” and Sir William Chesire in “ The Eldest 
Son.” Mr. Galsworthy published some few years 
ago what he called “Hall-Marked: A Satiric 
Trifle,” 2 which illustrates rather well his idea of 
setting men and the facts about them “ down faith- 


a “ The Modern Drama,” L. Lewisohn. 
2 Atlantic Monthly, June, 1914. 


CHARACTERIZATION 


73 

fully, so that they draw for us the moral of their 
natural actions.” The story is a mere episode. 
Edward, Lady Ella’s Scotch terrier, and Hannibal, 
Maud’s bull dog, have a fight in a pond. Edward 
is getting the worst of it when an unknown woman, 
“ Herself,” rushes into the pond and rescues him. 
The ladies are profoundly grateful and quite ready 
to become acquainted with “ Herself ” ; so, too, are 
their husbands, “ The Squire ” and “ The Rector.” 
Then comes the question of c Who is she.’ Not 
being able to discover whether or not she is the wife 
of Mr. Challenger, with whom she is living, their 
gratitude is weakened by their sense of propriety. 

It would be impossible to quote the entire scene 
but even the following fragments may give some 
idea of Mr. Galsworthy’s dialogue. 

Lady Ella. . . . It’s horrible not having the courage 
to take people as they are. 

The Squire. As they are? H’m! How can you till 
you know? 

Lady Ella. Trust our instincts, of course. 

The Squire/. And supposing she’d turned out not 
married — eh? 

Lady Ella. She’d still be herself, wouldn’t she? 
Maud. Ella! 

The Squire. H’m! Don’t know about that. 

Lady Ella. Of course she would, Tommy. 


Enter “ Herself.” There is some talk about the dogs. 
Maud notices that “ Herself ” wears no wedding ring. 
Lady Ella ( producing a card). I can’t be too grateful 



PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


74 

for all you’ve done for my poor darling. This is 
where we live. Do come — and see— ( Maud tweaks 
Lady Ella’s dress) That is — I’m — I 
“ Her self ” looks at Lady Ella in surprise. 

The Squire. I don’t know if your husband shoots, 
but — if — (Maud, catching The Squire’s eye, taps 
the third finger oj her left hand) — er — he — does 

— er — er — 

“ Herselj” looks at The Squire in surprise. Maud, 
turning to her husband, repeats the gesture with the 
low and simple word “ Look! ” 

The Rector (with round eyes, severely). Hannibal! 

He lifts the dog bodily, and carries him away. 

Maud. Don’t squeeze him, Bertie! 

(She follows through the French window.) 

The Squire (abruptly — speaking of the unoffending 
Edward). That dog’ll be forgettin’ himself in a 
minute. He picks up Edward, and takes him out — 
Lady Ella is left staring. 

Lady Ella (at last). You mustn’t think, I — you 
mustn’t think, we — Oh! I must just see they don’t 
let Edward get at Hannibal. (She skims away.) 
“ Herself ” is left staring after Lady Ella in surprise. 
Herself. What is the matter with them? 

The door is opened. 

The Maid (entering, and holding out a wedding-ring 

— severely). You left this, m’m, in the bath room. 
Herself (looking startled at her finger)- Oh! (Tak¬ 
ing it.) I hadn’t missed it. Thank you, Martha. 
The maid goes. 

A hand slipping in at the casement window, softly 
lays a pair of braces on the window-sill. “ Herself ” 
had given them to Maud for The Rector, who had 


CHARACTERIZATION 


75 

used his to tie up Hannibal in the early part of the 
scene.) “ Herself ” looks at the braces, then at the 
ring. Her lip curls , and she murmurs deeply: Ah! 

CURTAIN. 


We have dwelt so forcibly upon the importance 
of characterization and have insisted so strongly 
upon the fact that a character which 
has appealed to us remains our familiar JJ ai T and 
long after the story in which it figured 
has passed from our memory, that it might be worth 
while to inquire the reason for man’s interest in the 
people of stageland. 

Do you think it is because they are free “ to make 
pretend ” — a thing most of us have probably 
wanted to do, sometimes at least? Has it ever 
occurred to you that perhaps every man — and 
woman — has a natural desire to be somebody else? 
Oh, not a thought-out, reason-approved wish; that 
is quite another thing. What we mean is perhaps, 
after all, not even quite a full-fledged desire; it is 
rather a lurking fancy, a hazy thing that occasion¬ 
ally slips into the open only to return to the 
shadows of sub-consciousness. This desire is pos¬ 
sibly the chief cause of many of the minor irritations 
of life. We feel that we really could do more than 
attend to our own personal duties and thus we are 
likely to interfere with those of others. We call 
this sort of thing a spirit of helpfulness; the other 
people, being less enlightened, are given to dubbing 
it not minding one’s own affairs. It has just oc- 


76 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

curred to us that this desire to be other than we are 
may throw some light on the servant problem. May 
it not be because the maid feels that she is quite 
able' to fulfill the role of mistress that makes it 
seemingly impossible for her to fulfill equally well 
that of servant? 

Again the same desire may explain the aberra¬ 
tions of artists and literary men. Filled with a most 
laudable desire to do “ all the good they can to all 
the people they can in all the ways they can/’ they 
sometimes mix their callings. A musician insists 
upon our seeing a sunset — or is it a sunrise? — in 
his musical poem; a painter wants his painting to 
be a symphony in colors; a prose-writer wills to be 
a poet and changes his prose into poetry — free 
verse is a good form to choose — by beginning every 
line with a capital letter. 

One of the delights of childhood lies in the fact 
that our possibilities are still manifold; there are 
so many things that we can be. Explorer, perhaps 
missionary, poet, novelist, painter, professional man, 
business man, — all these avocations are open to the 
boy, many of them to the girl; and youth rarely 
doubts that it can be what it will. Only as age 
creeps upon us do we realize our limitations and 
recognize that if we would turn our energy in one 
direction, we must keep it from flowing in another. 
And yet, even as we advance in life, how few of us 
would be willing to admit that we are only what 
we seem to men! Nor would we, perhaps, be justi¬ 
fied in making such an admission. Not long ago 


CHARACTERIZATION 


77 


we met a man whose writings are marked by a deep 
knowledge of things both human and divine, and 
by a tender, all embracing charity; these writings, 
too, show such a wealth of fancy as to bring them 
close to the borderland of poetry. Yet this man im¬ 
pressed us most disagreeably as he greeted us with 
a supercilious smile and a bored look that flatly 
contradicted his “ glad to meet you.” Now the 
question is which is the real man; the one to whom 
we spoke in the flesh or the one who spoke to us in 
the spirit? May it not be that the man we met 
had “played pretend ” and had become in his writ¬ 
ings the man he wished to be? In many of us there 
is an elusive personality in hiding. Just “ as the 
rambling mansions of the old Catholic families had 
secret panels opening into the 1 priests hole/ to 
which the family resorted for spiritual comfort, so 
in the mind of the most successful man there are 
secret chambers where are hidden his unsuccessful 
ventures, his romantic ambitions, his unfulfilled 
promises. All that he dreamed of as possible is 
somewhere concealed in the man’s heart. He would 
not have the public know for the world how much 
he cares for the selves that have not had a fair 
chance to come into the light of day.” 1 Yet these 
selves, however well hidden from the gaze of man, 
still live within us and, like all living organisms, 
demand their nourishment; they find it in the char¬ 
acters of the drama. As we follow the short lives of 

1 “ Every Man’s Natural Desire to be Somebody Else,” 
S. W. Crothers, Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 1917 . 


78 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

these creatures of the imagination, we live over 
again the life that we had lost. We see in the hero 
or the heroine what we might have been ourselves; 
we hear what we might have said, we witness what 
we might have done. The sordid cares of the world 
around us are for the moment forgotten, the selves 
that are known to our fellow-men retire into 
shadowland, and the real selves that we have never 
been live and breathe and have their being. 

It is the old story, you see; man is interested in 
himself; and the better you get to know him psy¬ 
chologically, the stronger will be the appeal of your 
dramatic writings. 


Suggestive Questions 

1. Why is characterization more important in modern than 

in ancient drama? 

2. What are the essential requirements of characterization? 

3. How may interpretation affect characterization? 

4. Is John Galsworthy justified in saying that “ character is 

situation ? ” 

5. State the essential qualities of the motivation of character. 

6. Illustrate successful characterization by some examples 

taken from English drama. 

7. Is George Bernard Shaw’s characterization satisfying? 

8. How does John Galsworthy characterize? 

9. What tendencies in real life make it difficult to know man, 

either as he has been or as he is? 

10. Give a possible reason for man’s interest in the people of 
stageland. 






INN YARD PERFORMANCE 
Elizabethan Period 





















































































IV 


THEMATIC STRUCTURE 

T HE technic of the drama is more difficult to 
grasp than that of prose fiction. This arises 
from the fact that while the novelist has only his 
readers to consider, the dramatist has his actors, 
his theatre, and his audience. The novelist may 
change his earlier intentions more than once in the 
writing of his novel. Sir Walter Scott records in his 
journal that when he had finished the first of the 
three volumes in which “ Woodstock ” was origi¬ 
nally published, he was at a loss to find matter for 
the second volume. The playwright cannot work 
in this easy-going way. Not only must he have an 
interesting theme, the subject having a certain mag¬ 
nitude, as Aristotle puts it, but this theme must be 
conducted, as directly as possible, from the begin¬ 
ning through the middle to the end. “ The story 
cannot straggle into by-paths; it cannot meander 
into backwaters; it must move forward steadily and 
irresistibly, setting before the spectators the essen¬ 
tial scenes of the essential struggle.” 1 The elder 
Dumas places the secret of success on the stage in 
having “ the first act clear, the last act short, and 
all the acts interesting.” Mr. Henry James com- 

1 “ A Study of the Drama,” B. Matthews. 

79 


So PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

pares the five-act drama to a box of fixed dimen¬ 
sions and inelastic material into which a mass of 
precious things, apparently out of all 

Limitations P ro P or ti° n to the receptacle, must be 
packed. The problem of the dramatist 
is so to place these things that each may have its 
required place and not one may be injured. In 
other words, the theme chosen by the dramatist 
must be developed into a story suited to the stage; 
a story moving along in scenes that follow one 
another easily and naturally and that are peopled 
with characters interesting in themselves and con¬ 
trasting with one another. These characters, more¬ 
over, must be placed in appropriate surroundings 
and given opportunities for coming together that 
are not unduly improbable. This is no easy task 
but rather one in the fulfillment of which the dram¬ 
atist finds himself surrounded by difficulties, in¬ 
creasing in number as his work progresses. Take 
for instance the divisions of a drama, the beginning, 
the middle, and the end. In real life there are many 
beginnings. How many times has not each one of 
us said with the Royal Psalmist: “ And I said, Now 
I have begun: this is the change of the right hand 
of the most High.” Psalms, LXXVI., n; in the 
drama there is only one beginning. In real life the 
middle continues indefinitely; in the drama it has 
fixed limitations. In real life the end remains un¬ 
known; in the drama it must be determined upon 
so that the beginning and the middle may find in 
it their logical term. 


THEMATIC STRUCTURE 


8 l 


Consider, too, the limitations of time. Much 
must have happened to the characters before they 
appear upon the stage, much will happen to most 
of them after they leave it; for we have outgrown 
the Tragedy of Blood which prevented so many of 
its characters from ever leaving the stage. The 
playwright has no time, even if he had the means, 
to explain off-scene matter; yet he must make us 
know his characters if we are to understand the 
action of the play. And it is the first desire of 
every audience to understand what the play is 
about; the second is to have the story develop 
on the actual stage so that it may be followed with¬ 
out effort. This conveying to the audience of the 
knowledge they need to follow the plot is known 
technically as exposition; it is probably one of the 
best tests of a playwright’s command over the re¬ 
sources of stagecraft. 

There are various ways of making the audience 
acquainted with that portion of the plot which has 
taken place before the curtain rises on 
the first act of the play. The dramatist 
may use a prologue, as Plautus does in 
“ The Two Captives,” or a monologue inside the 
play, as Euripides does in “ Medea ” ; or he may 
put the information into intense dialogue supported 
by swift action in the opening scenes, as Shake¬ 
speare does in “ Othello”; finally he may scatter 
the information throughout the whole play, as Ibsen 
does in “ Ghosts.” The last method runs the risk 
of giving late in the play a knowledge that the audi- 


82 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

ence should have had earlier in order to appreciate 
both the story and the characters. The most expert 
playwrights tend to give all needed information in 
the first act, even at the risk of making the earlier 
scenes somewhat slow and labored. This was 
Scribe’s habit and he was surely a past-master in 
the art of playmaking. The situation was made 
perfectly clear in the earliest scenes of the play; 
then his characters were brought into the action and 
introduced in such a way as to make their identi¬ 
fication in succeeding scenes a matter requiring no 
effort. The elder Dumas was particularly careful 
about his introductory scenes. He has told a rather 
good story about one of his plays, “ Mademoiselle 
de Bell Isle.” He waited two or three years after 
he had actually invented the story for what he con¬ 
sidered an effective opening. One day he heard of 
a pair of lovers who had broken a coin in two; each 
was to keep a half, returning it to the other only 
as a sign that their love affair was ended. Dumas, 
taking this for a starting point, at once wrote his 
play. Sardou showed great ingenuity in his ex¬ 
positions. The first act of his “ Fedora ” is nothing 
but a prologue; it is, however, swift in action, pic¬ 
torial in movement, and ends with a suggestion of 
suspense well calculated to keep up the interest of 
the audience until the second act of the play. In 
some of his plays he has used another method. 
Many characters are brought before us; they make 
amusing remarks and reveal themselves in amusing 
situations. As the play goes forward, a few of the 


THEMATIC STRUCTURE 83 

more striking figures take the center of the stage, 
and we discover that the subsidiary people have 
been used only to make us aware of the relations 
existing between really important characters. This 
method requires the dexterity of a Sardou for its 
successful employment; in hands less skillful it 
would tend to distract the attention of the audience 
from what one might call the heart of the play. 

The two old devices of opening the play with the 
conversation of two or three servants, or of having 
one character tell another what the latter obviously 
knows, have been discarded as means of enlighten¬ 
ing the audience as to what has happened before 
the play begins. Prologues, too, seem to have gone 
out of fashion and even the long soliloquy has 
ceased to hold its own; yet the playwright is still 
bound to put his audience in touch with the story 
of his play. How is he to do this? That must 
depend largely upon himself. It may be said in a 
general way, however, that simplicity is quite as 
important in the drama as it is in the other arts, and 
that a straightforward, clear, and not too lengthy, 
exposition can hardly fail to give satisfaction. Tech¬ 
nique is rarely a birth gift; it is usually the result 
of hard work, work that at first must be largely 
imitative. The dramatist reads or sees plays, past 
and present, notes carefully the points that make 
for their success, and then tries to use these points 
in developing his own dramatic creations. Nor 
need this imitation be considered as derogating 
from his own ability; for, whether he be a disciple 


84 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

of Shakespeare or of Ibsen, he will find that his 
master at first worked imitatively. He must 
remember, too, that technique is historically of 
three kinds; universal, special, and individual. The 
universal technique deals with those 
Technique essen ti a ] s w hich all good plays, ancient 

and modern, must share at least in part; in other 
words, it has to do with the qualities which make a 
play a play. This universal technique must obvi¬ 
ously be studied, and may advantageously be 
copied. 

By special technique is meant the technique of a 
certain period, such as the Elizabethan or the 
Restoration period. The drama of a succeeding 
period must share with the drama of the preceding 
age certain characteristics, otherwise it will not be 
a play at all; yet it must be presented differently, 
at least to some extent. Why? Because the later 
dramatist is using a stage different from that of 
those who went before him and is writing for a 
public of different standards both in morals and 
in art. The truth of this statement will be readily 
seen if we compare the stage of the Greeks with 
that of the Elizabethan or the Restoration period, 
or with that of our own times; and then make a 
comparison of the religious and social ideas of the 
Greeks with those of the audiences of the sixteenth, 
or the seventeenth, or the twentieth century. It is 
usually safe for a young dramatist to be guided as 
to the technique of the period on which he is enter¬ 
ing by the playwrights immediately preceding him, 


THEMATIC STRUCTURE 85 

but sometimes this does not hold. In the early 
nineteenth century, you remember, there was a 
revolt, especially marked in France and Germany, 
from Classicism to Romanticism. Late in that 
same century one saw, too, the influence of Scribe 
yielding to that of Ibsen. 

Individual technique is found in the work of the 
great masters. It is peculiarly elusive, since it is 
the result of a particular temperament working on 
the dramatic problems of a given time. Imitation 
of the individual technique “ usually results,” as 
one author puts it, “ like wearing the tailor-made 
clothes of a friend, in a palpable misfit.” 1 

To sum up, the would be dramatist must master 
the subject of universal technique; the special and 
the individual technique, he should study for sug¬ 
gestions rather than as models. 

Universal technique, we have said, deals with the 
essentials of drama. These essentials may be vari¬ 
ously stated but, in final analysis, one discovers that 
they are contained in the two words, action and 
emotion. There must be a story and this story 
must be capable of evoking and sustaining the 
interest of the spectators; in other words it must 
appeal to their emotions. In the early days, mere 
physical movement, imitative action, was an impor¬ 
tant dramatic factor. There is a little Resurrection 
Play, dating from about 967 a.d., and said to be 
the earliest extant specimen of drama in England, 2 

1 “ Dramatic Technique,” G. P. Baker 


86 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

in which the directions for imitative movement 
occupy three quarters of the space and dialogue 
only one. Would it be too great a digression to 
wonder if the “ Moving Pictures ” are merely giv¬ 
ing back, to movement its old importance? Perhaps 
we have completed the circle of progress and have 
reached the point from which we started. Not that 
we would underestimate the importance of move¬ 
ment; far from it; we have had a keen realization 
of this importance since our childhood’s days. In¬ 
deed we recall a playlet written by us in those days 
which consisted mainly of movement and title. The 
title, “ Mignonne or the Adventures of a Love 
Letter,” we really must insist upon considering a 
major part of the work. Notice how it proves that 
one wanted “ thrillers ” years ago even as one 
demands them today. That is one blessing attached 
to the study of psychology; human nature is ever 
the same, what you learned about it yesterday holds 
good for today and tomorrow. But to return to the 
playlet. In the first scene, Mignonne, the maid, hides 
the love letter sent to her mistress; in the second 
scene — fortunately there were only two — the 
maid’s theft is discovered and the love letter re¬ 
stored. We had only two characters in the playlet, 
the mistress and the maid, but see the possibilities 
the subject offers for the cinematograph! Elaborate 
the plot, bring in a few more characters, and there 
you have your play quite ready for the screen. 
Sarcastic? Perhaps we are; but you must admit 
that it is hard on lovers of literature to have the 


THEMATIC STRUCTURE 87 

literary value of the drama absolutely ignored. We 
are willing to concede, however, that the old adage, 
“ Actions speak louder than words,’’ still holds true, 
and that what a man does instinctively, spontane¬ 
ously, at a crucial moment, shows his real charac¬ 
ter as nothing else could do. 

One must remember, moreover, that the play¬ 
wright wishes not only to gain but to hold the at¬ 
tention of the audience. However humiliating the 
admission may be, most of us are forced to admit 
that it is difficult to give sustained attention to a 
play that makes no appeal to our emotions. Con¬ 
sider for a moment the question of lectures. Not 
many of them last over an hour, and yet how tire¬ 
some one is likely to find them unless the lecturer re¬ 
lieves the strain of close attention by some amusing 
anecdotes or dramatic illustrations. Even the most 
intellectual among us have feelings as well as brains, 
and the really successful dramatist must make an 
appeal to both. 

While action may exist largely for itself, as it 
does in the case of melodrama, it may, and it 
should, also help towards a better 
understanding of the story of the play 
and of the characters who develop that 
story. The first scene in the first act of Shake¬ 
speare’s “ Romeo and Juliet ” illustrates this point. 
The quarrels, the actual fighting, the halting of the 
fight by the angry Prince, — these not only char¬ 
acterize in every instance, from the servants of the 
two factions to Tybalt, Benevolio, the Capulets, the 


88 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


Montagues, and the Prince, but they emphasize the 
enmity existing between the houses of Capulet and 
Montague, they prepare for the parts to be played 
by Benevolio and Tybalt in later scenes, and they 
motivate the edict of banishment which alone 
renders possible the tragedy of the play. 

It is not necessary that the action be wholly or 
even chiefly physical in order to appeal to our emo¬ 
tions; it may make a very successful appeal by 
revealing the mental state of one or more characters 
in the play in such a way as to arouse our interest 
and excite our sympathy or antipathy. Marlowe 
uses action in this way in his “ Faustus.” 

Faustus. <c .Ah, Faustus, 

Now thou hast but one bare hour to live, 

And then thou must be damn’d perpetually! 

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, 

That time may cease, and midnight never come. 


All beasts are happy, for when they die, 

Their souls are soon dissolv’d in elements: 

But mine must live still to be plagu’d in hell. 
Curs’d be the parents that engender’d me! 

No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer 
That hath deprived thee of the joys of heaven. 


(Enter Devils) 

My God, my God, look not so fierce on me! 
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while! 
Ugly hell, gape not! come not, Lucifer! 

I’ll burn my books! —Ah, Mephistopheles! ” 





THEMATIC STRUCTURE 89 

You may say that there is physical action here, that 
the tortured Faustus flings himself about the stage. 
Granted. But surely it is his mental condition, not 
his physical action, that appeals to our emotions. 

One might quote, as another example of mental 
activity, the opening scene of Rostand’s “ Les 
Romanesques.” There is very little physical action 
on the part of either Percinet or Sylvette and yet 
they amuse and please us by their own pleasant ex¬ 
citement as one reads to the other the story of 
“ Romeo and Juliet.” 

We may conclude from all this that marked 
mental activity may be quite as dramatic as mere 
physical action: a truth emphasized by the fact 
that the greatest dramatists have used action, not 
so much for its own sake, as to reveal such mental 
states as are intended to excite sympathy or repul¬ 
sion in the audience. 

Just here comes the vital question: Which is 
the real essential in drama, the action that excites 
or the emotion excited? It would seem that this 
question could be easily answered by making both 
action and emotion essential; the first as a means, 
the second as an end. More careful consideration, 
however, shows that the matter cannot be dismissed 
so readily. If we accept as our definition of “ dra¬ 
matic ” that which “ by representation of imaginary 
personages is capable of interesting an average 
audience assembled in a theatre,” 1 we see at once 
that while the interest must be excited and sus- 


1 “ Play-Making,” W. Archer. 




90 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

tained, in other words the emotions of the audience 
appealed to, the dramatist is given no rigid law as 
to the means he is to use in order to reach this end. 
Turning, then, to the great dramatists of all ages 
to find, what means custom has sanctioned, we dis¬ 
cover that emotion is excited in the audience, or to 
speak more accurately, conveyed directly from the 
actors to the audience, by action, characterization, 
and dialogue. We have said conveyed directly from 
the actors, for the writer of dramas that are in the 
right sense of the word theatric, works only indi¬ 
rectly through the characters which he has created. 

Dramatic dialogue is not an easy thing to handle. 
It must be clear, condensed, characteristic, and 
interesting. It reaches perfection when, 

Dialogue . . r . . 

instead of merely stating facts, it so 
absorbs us by its characterization that we assimi¬ 
late the facts unconsciously. The playwright must 
not so bind himself to a clear presentation of facts 
as to merely see a scene; he must rather feel it, 
make himself an integral part of it, nay, be himself 
each character in turn; then, if he has psychological 
knowledge to conceive and technical skill to express, 
his dialogue will be what nature would have it 
under the given conditions of the play. 

Another point to be considered under the caption 
of dialogue is the use of dialect. Formerly w T e had 
Dialect “ stage dialects”; that is certain ways 
taken as typical of different races. For instance, a 
Frenchman, an Irishman, a Negro, spoke in a way 
that had become time-honored on the stage as 











THEMATIC STRUCTURE 91 

representing each type. Needless to say, such dia¬ 
lect was at best only an approximation to the speech 
of real life. At present, efforts are being made to 
come nearer the truth. It is said of Lady Gregory 
that, after writing a rough draft of one of her plays, 
she goes among the people of her community, gets 
them to talk about the subject of which the play 
treats, notes their phrases, and gives them to her 
characters in re-writing the play. This surely is 
extreme accuracy. While this method could hardly 
be used by all playwrights, they should at least 
keep in mind a few qualities absolutely essential to 
the dialect that improves a play. These essentials 
may be summed up under the headings of accuracy, 
persistent use, and clearness for the general public. 
Since dialect is used to characterize a figure as far 
as type is concerned, it obviously fails to achieve 
its purpose if it is not the dialect that would be 
used by the character in real life, if it is not used 
by the character throughout the play, or if it is 
not understood by the public at least in so far as 
to make it recognizable. 

One use of dialogue which has always seemed 
to us particularly objectionable is its employment 
by a character, supposedly under the stress of 
strong emotion, to describe his feelings. This cer¬ 
tainly is not true to life. It has been our experi¬ 
ence, and probably yours, that the more strongly 
one feels the less one says. What Dryden’s 
Lyndaraxa said of love, 

“ By my own experience I can tell 
Those who love truly do not argue well,” 


92 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

may, we think, be predicated of the other passions. 
The superficial things of life may be explained and 
discanted upon, but those that touch us deeply 
rarely find expression except in silent prayer. Some 
of us may be more garrulous, but even in that case 
the garrulity is not forthcoming until the emotional 
crisis is passed. 

Finally, if the playwright cannot actually make 
himself each character of the play, he should at 
least strive to know his characters so thoroughly as 
to take the dialogue from them rather than give it 
to them. To put it in another way, he must never 
speak as himself but always as the character he is 
depicting. M. Dumas fils has said, “There should 
be something of the poet, the artist in words, in 
every dramatist we would like to add that there 
not only “ should be,” but that there must be much 
of the psychologist. No man can portray that 
which he does not know. Hence to present human 
life and character in a way sufficiently realistic to 
win the favor of his audience, the dramatist must 
make that life and character the subjects of his 
closest study. 

It is evident that the playwright must give no less 
thought to his choice of a theme than he gives to 
its dramatic development. In this 
Themes 0 choice, the audience before whom the 
play is to be presented is always an im¬ 
portant factor; a dramatist may sometimes improve 
the taste of his public, but he can never ignore it. 

In ancient Greek tragedy, the chief materials for 


THEMATIC STRUCTURE 


93 

the drama were furnished by Greek mythology; a 
web, as it were, of national or local traditions. 
These traditions were held in equal honor as a se¬ 
quence of religion and as an introduction to history. 
They were kept alive among the people by cere¬ 
monies and monuments, and they were already 
elaborated for the requirements of dramatic art 
by the treatment of the epic or the merely mythical 
poet. Affecting tragical subjects were found also 
in the crimes and consequent sufferings of the 
Pelopidae of Mycenae and the Labaeidae of Thebes. 
Never, one might notice in passing, did these plays, 
written for the Athenians, deal with the crimes of 
families connected with the history of Athens. The 
Attic drama, too, prefers beauty to realistic pres¬ 
entation; witness the wearing of masks by the 
actors lest an ignoble visage be given to a god, and 
the telling that a bloody deed has been accom¬ 
plished rather than having it enacted before the 
audience. 

The Roman drama at its best was but an imita¬ 
tion of the Greek. The farcical element is strong in 
those writers who catered to the Roman people, a 
people craving sensual rather than intellectual en¬ 
joyment, and taking greater pleasure in the gladi¬ 
atorial contest than in any form of dramatic 
entertainment. 

The Middle Ages, characterized by a spirit of 
Faith and by popular intimacy, if one may use the 
expression, with the things of God, give us the 
Christmas Crib and the Easter Play, both intended 


94 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

to instruct the people and to excite their piety, but 
also opening the way for the Miracle and the Mys¬ 
tery 1 Plays so favored by the masses. Next we have 
the Moral Play, dealing with moral rather than with 
dogmatic or mystic theology; and finally, the Inter¬ 
lude designed for entertainment, and the Chronicle 
Play presenting matters historical. Before pass¬ 
ing to a later period of the drama let us consider 
some of the themes actually employed in the 
periods we have been discussing. 

Among the Greeks, yEschylus is regarded as the 
creator of tragedy and his “ Oresteia ” is probably 
the greatest production of his genius. It is a tril¬ 
ogy made up of the three plays “ Agamemnon,” 
the “ Choephorse ” or, as we call it, “ Electra,” and 
the “ Eumenides ” or “ Furies.” 

In the first play, Agamemnon, the king, is mur¬ 
dered by his queen, Clytemnestra. In the second, 
Orestes, Agamemnon’s son, avenges the king’s 
death by killing the queen. In the third, Orestes is 
brought to trial, the Furies accusing and Pallas 
defending him. Finally Pallas Athena herself, per¬ 
sonating Divine Wisdom, balances the claims for 
and against Orestes, establishes peace, and ends the 
long series of crimes and consequent punishments 
which have desolated the royal house of Atreus. 
If we strip these plays of their classic lore and take 
from them their gods and goddesses, what do they 
become? The story of woman’s intrigue, man’s 
passion, and the tendency of justice itself to pal¬ 
liate the guilt of him who commits a crime under 


THEMATIC STRUCTURE 95 

the stress of passion aroused by just provocation. 

Sophocles, in his “ Antigone,” considered by the 
ancients one of his greatest works, plays upon the 
theme of feminine heroism. 

Euripides, in his “ Medea,” the most faultless of 
his dramas, tells the story of a divorced and out¬ 
raged wife and of the vengeance which she exacts 
from her rival. 

The Greek comedy deals largely with irony and 
satire, aimed at themes used in more serious 
compositions. 

The Roman drama, as we have already said, 
imitated the Greek and therefore calls for no sepa¬ 
rate consideration with regard to the themes 
employed. 

The plays of the Middle Ages, religious in char¬ 
acter, naturally chose themes taken from the Bible, 
Tradition, or the lives of the saints. The Moral 
Plays treated of virtues and vices, the Interludes 
can scarcely be said to have had themes in the strict 
sense of the word, and the Chronicle Plays dealt 
entirely with historical subjects. 

Taking a general view of later dramatic periods, 
we find the drama choosing for its themes some 
phase or conception of human life. Each nation 
has its own hall-mark, one emphasizing this point, 
another that; but the rock bottom is everywhere 
the same, — man with his beliefs, his views, his 
passions, and his foibles. In Italy, fairy tales are 
used by Carlo Gozzi; in Spain, the point of honor 
by Lope de Rueda, and this point of honor together 


96 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

with devotion to the Church and loyalty to the 
King, by Calderon. In France, Corneille deals with 
heroic deeds, Racine makes love his dominant 
theme, Moliere turns to account whatever comes 
his way. In Germany, Lessing, Goethe and Schiller, 
the three who redeemed the German theatre from 
long-continued mediocrity, live up to their doctrine 
that the drama is most powerful when it is closest 
to human nature. Scandinavia becomes important 
only with the works of Ibsen, works that can be 
discussed more satisfactorily in connection with the 
drama of today which they are influencing so per¬ 
vasively. In England, the Tragedy of Blood, deal¬ 
ing chiefly with blood-shedding, has a short life; so, 
also, have the comedies of Lyly and Greene, the 
former using the spectacular and the latter the 
themes of averted tragedy and sentimental love. 
Marlowe delights his audience with violence and 
spectacle, even while his blank verse gives his char¬ 
acters a medium of expression superior to any 
previously heard upon the English stage. Then 
comes Shakespeare, who has used in his numerous 
plays practically all the themes suitable to really 
great drama. In his comedies, one finds the contest 
between love and friendship, mistaken identity, love 
intrigue; in his tragedies, love, jealousy, ambition, 
ingratitude; in his historical dramas, patriotism, 
passion, the virtues and the vices of royalty. 

Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch has written a most 
readable paper on Shakespeare’s pet devices and 
on how he — perhaps, — went about writing “A 


THEMATIC STRUCTURE 


97 

Midsummer-Night’s Dream.” 1 Among the devices, 
he places first the trick of disguising a woman in 
man’s apparel. This starts with Julia in “ The 
Two Gentlemen of Verona,” runs through the com¬ 
edies and into “ Cymbeline Portia, Nerissa, and 
Jessica, in “ The Merchant of Venice”; Viola in 
“ Twelfth Night”; Imogen in “ Cymbeline.” Pos¬ 
sibly a reason for this might be found in the fact 
that women’s parts were played by boys. Another 
device is that of working the plot upon a ship¬ 
wreck, actually shown or merely reported. This 
device plays a part in “ The Comedy of Errors,” 
“ Pericles,” “ The Winter’s Tale,” “Twelfth 
Night,” and “ The Tempest.” Then, too, there is 
the device of using a potion that will arrest life 
without destroying it, found in “ Romeo and 
Juliet,” and in “ Cymbeline.” Sir Arthur further 
calls attention to the fact that having once found 
a device successful, Shakespeare never hesitated to 
use it again. Knowing as we do that the great 
dramatist worked upon old plays, chronicles, and 
romances, we may be sure that he showed no 
greater hesitation in using as often as suited his 
purpose the devices of other men. 

Sir Arthur’s conception of how Shakespeare went 
about writing “ A Midsummer-Night’s Dream ” 
seems to us especially ingenious. 

The play is to be written for a wedding — that 
is taken for granted. Then says Shakespeare to 

1 “ The Workmanship of ‘ A Midsummer-Night’s Dream,’ ” 
The North American Review, June, 1915. 


98 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

himself: A wedding calls for poetry. The senti¬ 
ment must be fresh. Shall I use my trick of mis¬ 
taken identity? A pair of lovers?—nay, that 
would need two pairs. This play is for a bridal 
eve. A night for lovers, a midsummer’s night, 
dewy thickets, the moon. And fairies! To be sure, 
fairies with their philters and their pranks. And 
then an interlude, there must be an interlude. A 
set of clowns shall perform it and they shall be 
chased by the fairies while they are rehearsing. 

Sir Arthur does not assert that Shakespeare actu¬ 
ally constructed the play just in this way, but after 
all he may have done so. The Muses do not sell 
their gifts but, having once bestowed them, they 
leave us freedom in their use. One must remember, 
too, that Shakespeare was that rara avis , a practical 
genius; near-sighted to see the money value of his 
work and far-sighted to look into that world of 
fancy and imagination which plays so important a 
part in many of his dramas. 

Once we have reached the period of modern 
drama, the playwright is practically free to choose 
what theme he will, provided that it is adapted to 
dramatization and calculated to find favor with his 
audience. If his play be a representation of the life 
around him, filled with types appreciated by his 
own country men, it will hardly meet with success 
outside his own language. This is shown by the 
fact that the rich and solid comedies of Augier 
have rarely gone beyond the boundaries of France 
while the plays of Scribe, in which the characters 


THEMATIC STRUCTURE 99 

are mere puppets in the hands of the playwright, 
have been performed in many countries. 

There has been for some years past a growing 
tendency towards Realism, although Romance has 
never relinquished its hold on drama. 

0*1 l i ii • 1 i ^ Realism 

Social problems, as well as social life, 
have given material to the playwright, and the 
people of stageland have satisfactorily settled many 
issues still being debated in the world of reality. 
Morality and immorality have both appeared on the 
scene, sometimes one sometimes the other in the 
ascendant according to the temper of the epoch or 
the nation. It has been left for our own days, how¬ 
ever, to place before an audience such scenes as one 
could not bear to witness in the privacy of the most 
secret chamber, and to discuss on the public stage 
such questions as one would not propose even to 
one’s most intimate friend. 

Marital infidelity is not a new theme, the “ eter¬ 
nal triangle ” is soon learned in life as well as in 
Euclid; there are, however, many ways of treating 
the subject. In dramas of less recent date, there 
were usually two men and one woman to form the 
figure, but invariably one of the three was elimi¬ 
nated before the end of the play so that the other 
two might be happy. It was a queer sort of moral¬ 
ity, you will say. Perhaps; yet at least it showed 
recognition of the marriage bond. But now — ! 

Mr. Bernard Shaw — whose worth as a critic 
will surely not be questioned — holds M. Eugene 
Brieux to be the greatest French dramatist since 



100 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


the seventeenth century and the worthy successor 
of Moliere. We refuse to quote the works of M. 
Brieux but we may mention some of his themes. 
The average marriage of convenience is odious but 
better than spinsterhood; motherhood should be 
regulated; love should not be curbed by motives 
of prudence (morality seems to have been omitted 
from M. Brieux’ vocabulary). 

M. Hervieu, “ an elegant and reserved artist,” 
makes in two of his plays, “ Les Tenailles ” and 
“ La Loi de l’homme,” a strong if indirect plea for 
divorce by showing “ the meaningless bondage ” of 
the marriage vows that one does not wish to keep. 

“ Le Pardon,” by M. Jules Lemaitre, deals with 
a husband and wife each of whom has been un¬ 
faithful; idleness and loneliness led to the wife’s 
fault, wounded vanity to the husband’s. “ They 
are both miserable sinners, and in the recognition 
of their common frailty may love each other 
again.” 1 Mr. Lewisohn adds that the psychology 
of this play is exquisite. What about the play 
itself? 

In Germany, drama has become largely natural¬ 
istic. It gives you life as the playwrights have ob¬ 
served it. A good deal of sordidness, a 
gleam of goodness and self-denial, souls 
warped by the wrongs of the world, — all these 
are found in favored themes; but here, as else¬ 
where, Romance still keeps her dramatic following. 
While there are, thank God, notable exceptions, 

1 “The Modern Drama,” L. Lewisohn. 


Naturalism 


THEMATIC STRUCTURE 101 

problems of sex and disasters of love still serve as 
the dramatists’ chief themes. Perhaps this neurotic 
eroticism has no more sensational exponent than the 
Italian D’Annunzio whose works are a mingling of 
lyrical beauty with abnormal brutality. How piti¬ 
ful that one should so misuse the gift of song! 

That the English drama declined in the nine¬ 
teenth century is admitted by everyone; that a dra¬ 
matic “ Renascence ” has dawned seems also to be 
a fact. Just what it means, just what it will lead 
to, the future must tell. Its exponents wage war 
upon the unreality of the drama in the years im¬ 
mediately preceding their coming; is there no dan¬ 
ger of their making reality too real? Ibsen is 
undoubtedly one of the great influences of the day. 
The realistic study of current manners, the intel¬ 
lectual discussion of social problems, the symbolic 
interpretation of life, — each of these owes some¬ 
thing to him. Yet — pardon our temerity — is it 
wise to follow him too closely? Does not his pes¬ 
simism blind him to much that is good in man? 
Take his “ Ghosts ” for instance. There is not 
one really moral character in the play. The theme? 
To us the play seems to ask a question which it 
fails to answer, at least directly; one might deduce 
an answer from the nature of the play itself. And 
the question? In its briefest form, it is only the 
old “ cui bono.” Some critics hold the play to be 
a protest against social conventions concerning 
marriage. Mr. Ibsen may have intended it to be 
such a protest, but he certainly has not shown that 


102 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


much is gained, even in this world, from the non- 
observance of these conventions. 

Turning to the list of English dramatists, one 
finds the names of Jones, Pinero, Wilde, Shaw, and 
Galsworthy. We may owe them much from the 
point of view of actual thematic development, but 
for their choice of themes, speaking in a general 
way, we are not unduly grateful. Marital infidel¬ 
ity, temptation yielded to, intrigue, freedom and 
flexibility in the relations of the sexes, the injustice 
of the social system, — these appear to be favorite 
subjects. It is a pity that the modern dramatist 
should be so given to the writing of problem plays. 
Why not first try to solve the problem of whether 
or not the writing of such plays will do any good? 

But what about the knowledge of psychology 
shown by these writers who pose as portrayers of 
Psycho- as ^ That there is much vice 

logical in the world we are all forced to admit, 
Blunders that human nature is weak no man with 
any self-knowledge can deny; but that the human 
race is as these playwrights see it, a mass of cor¬ 
rupted selfishness, devoid of loyality towards God 
or man, — to this we shall never subscribe. Nor 
does it seem to us that some of the “ real life ” in 
these realistic plays is altogether true to nature. 

Take Mrs. Alving in Ibsen’s “ Ghosts.” 
Would a woman such as she is repre¬ 
sented to be, one who having yielded to the advice 
of her minister (it is too bad that Mr. Ibsen did not 
find her another lover) and returned to her hus- 


Ibsen 


THEMATIC STRUCTURE IO3 

band, tries during many years to hide his immoral¬ 
ity, especially from their son, — would such a 
woman, we repeat, have kept with her the girl 
Regina? She might have been forced to do so by 
Mr. Alving while he lived, although Mr. Ibsen 
gives us no hint of this, but surely after Mr. 
Alving’s death she would have made provision for 
Regina to live elsewhere than in the Alving home. 
And could a mother who loved her son as Mrs. 
Alving loved Oswald, have told him the story of 
his father’s sin in the presence of Regina? Again 
consider Nora Helmer in “ A Doll’s House.” She is 
a devoted wife and mother, finding her happiness 
in that of her husband and her children. Even the 
signing of her father’s name, wrong in itself, is 
motivated by love for her husband. She is appar¬ 
ently a pure, innocent woman. In the last act you 
remember she tells us that she has been a doll- 
child to her father, a doll-wife to her husband, and 
dolls are not supposed to have more knowledge of 
evil than of good. How then account for her scene 
with Dr. Rand in Act II., or for her complete and 
almost instantaneous change of views and char¬ 
acter in the closing scene of the play? We hardly 
like to enter into details, the subject is not attrac¬ 
tive, but we cannot help regretting that Mr. Ibsen 
has been so unfortunate in his experiences if he 
is really depicting life as he has seen it. 

M. Brieux is called by Mr. Shaw the most im¬ 
portant dramatist west of Russia, since the death 
of Ibsen. “ In that kind of comedy which is so true 


104 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


to life that we have to call it tragi-comedy, and 
which is not only an entertainment but a history 
and a criticism of contemporary morals, 
Bmiix * s j ncom p ara biy the greatest writer 

France has produced since Moliere.” 1 We 
admit frankly that we refuse to read most of M. 
Brieux’ works but we have in mind one play in 
which a startling assertion is made and a great 
psychological blunder committed. The play is 
called “ The Three Daughters of Monsieur 
Dupont.” It is in every way worthy of the Ibsen 
school. We shall discuss not the play, however, 
but merely the assertion and the blunder. The 
assertion is made by one of M. Dupont’s daughters, 
Caroline, in Act IV. She says: “ I turned to relig¬ 
ion for' consolation. For a while it cheated my 
craving for love; but it couldn’t give me peace, and 
it has only left me more bitter and disillusioned.” 
The religion to which Caroline turned for con¬ 
solation has been previously mentioned by M, 
Brieux; it is the Catholic. Charity requires us to 
believe that M. Brieux must have been intensely 
ignorant of at least one reality in the world around 
him, the Catholic Church, when he wrote the words 
quoted, the falsity of which nothing save crass ig¬ 
norance could well excuse. Not to speak of the 
“ elder sons ” who remain at home with the 
“ Father ” and turn to Him naturally for consola¬ 
tion in the trials that must come even to those who 
“ are always with Him,” how many “ prodigals ” 

1 “ Three Plays of Brieux,” Prefaced by George Bernard Shaw. 


THEMATIC STRUCTURE IO5 

have also turned to the “ Father’s house,” religion, 
for consolation and peace! Can M. Brieux show 
us one who has been left “ more bitter and more 
disillusioned ” ? The late war has had many dis¬ 
astrous results but at least it has made evident that 
even in poor misguided France, men realize, in 
their hour of need, where to turn for peace and 
consolation. 

Now for the psychological blunder. M. Brieux 
should have studied religious women before he 
tried to depict one. We beg pardon. Of course 
no religious women would have allowed him 
to study them. However he might have read — 
shall we say some saints’ lives? Since he has evi¬ 
dently not done this, let us try in a spirit of Chris¬ 
tian charity to show him a few points in which 
Caroline differs from the real woman he attempts 
to paint. Take her conduct in Act I. She knows 
that Courthezon, her father’s assistant, has finished 
his invention, because, as she confesses to her 
mother, she has prayed for it. The religious people 
whom we have met do not vaunt the value of their 
own prayers. But perhaps she did not intend to 
be vainglorious. In the same scene, however, she 
utters a sentiment quite out of keeping with her 
character. Her sister, Julie, reads an extract from 
a paper. “ Solange was still in Robert’s arms. At 
this moment the Count entered, menacing, terrible, 
his revolver in his hand.” Julie wants to know 
what will happen next — the story, like all serials of 
the kind, ends at a thrilling moment. Caroline im- 


106 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

mediately answers: “ The Count will kill them, of 
course. It is his right.” Now while we do not 
doubt that the Count will kill them, — that is 
quite in keeping with the tale, — we do not under¬ 
stand how a deeply religious and supposedly well- 
instructed person could accord him the right to 
commit murder. In Act II., Caroline plainly shows 
her repugnance to meet her sister, Angele, who has 
been unfortunate. This pharisaical attitude is 
also evidenced by her treatment of Angele in 
Act III. Is there anything deeply religious in this 
lack of charity? Have not the purest, holiest, real 
women vowed their lives to Christ for the uplift 
of their fallen sisters? Finally consider her giving 
fifteen thousand francs to Courthezon for his inven¬ 
tion in the hope that he will marry her. She says: 
“ I knew he couldn’t love me, but I hoped he would 
be grateful for what I ... I only wanted his grati¬ 
tude and pity.” Poor M. Brieux! His Caroline 
is a sniveling devotee who knows as little about 
religion as himself. She may have passed much of 
her time in attending church services but we fear 
her piety was always the fanaticism of maudlin 
sentiment rather than the gift of the Holy Ghost. 
M. Brieux should have given more attention to 
psychology, and learned something of what the 
Catholic Church requires from its deeply religious 
members, as well as something of what the Catholic 
religion does in forming the characters of those 
who follow its teachings. 

But we must not give up hope of better things. 



THEMATIC STRUCTURE 107 

Many of the writers who have used ill-chosen 
themes, have surely shown much dramaturgic skill. 
Let those who follow turn this skill to the develop¬ 
ment of worthier subjects; then we shall have a 
dramatic renascence of which we may well be 
proud. What the near future will do for the stage, 
it is too soon to say. The dramatic successes of the 
near past show, unfortunately, the same tendency 
towards the choice of sex problems and marital infi¬ 
delity for themes as is evinced in the writers whom 
we have been discussing. Yet there are occasional 
glimmers of light, strong enough perhaps to show 
some clear-sighted dramatist that realism does not 
necessarily imply immorality. 


Suggestive Questions 

1. Why is the technic of the drama more difficult to grasp 

than that of prose fiction? 

2. What is the problem of the dramatist? 

3. How does time limitation affect the dramatist? 

4. Define universal technic. 

5. Define special technic. 

6. Define individual technic. 

7. Should the action of the play exist solely for itself? 

8. When is dramatic dialogue perfect? 

9. What are the essentials of dialect? 

10. Give some themes suited to dramatization. 


V 

PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMAS 


A LL dramas that are worthy of the name must 
necessarily be more or less psychological since 
they are based on the study of human nature. There 
are some, however, in which this study goes deeper 
into the heart of man. Some, to put it in another 
way, in which the characters are far more impor¬ 
tant than is the story that they tell. Among these 
we would number the “ Antigone ” of Sophocles. 

We all remember the story upon which the play 
is based. After the banishment of (Edipus from 
Thebes, his two sons, Eteocles and Poly- 

Sophocles . A . 

mces, agree to share the kingdom be¬ 
tween them and to reign alternately year by year. 
The choice of reigning the first year falls by lot to 
Eteocles. At the end of the year, he refuses to sur¬ 
render the kingdom to his brother. Polynices flees 
to Adrastos, King of Argos, marries the King’s 
daughter, and obtains an army with which to at¬ 
tack Thebes and thus enforce his claim to the king¬ 
dom. A long drawn out siege follows, with suc¬ 
cesses on both sides but no decisive victory for 
either. At length it is agreed to have the two 
brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, decide the issue 
by single combat. In the duel resulting from this 

108 


PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMAS IO9 

decision, both are killed. The contending armies 
again take up the fight but the invaders are finally 
repulsed with great loss. Creon, the uncle of 
Eteocles and Polynices, assumes control over 
Thebes. He orders the body of Eteocles to be 
given honorable burial but that of Polynices to 
lie where he fell; no one is to accord him funeral 
rites under pain of death. Antigone, sister to 
Eteocles and Polynices, rebels at the decree which 
deprives one of her brothers of burial, and, not¬ 
withstanding the efforts of her sister, Ismene, to 
dissuade her, she resolves to bury her brother with 
her own hands. She is detected in the act of bury¬ 
ing him and, in spite of the entreaties of her lover, 
Haemon, the son of Creon, the latter orders her to 
be entombed alive. Haemon, unable to survive his 
beloved Antigone, kills himself. Eurydice, the 
mother of Haemon, commits suicide on hearing 
that her son is dead, and Creon, left alone, bewails 
when too late his rigor towards Antigone. 

So much for the story; the psychology of the 
play is shown chiefly in Sophocles’ treatment of the 
characters of Antigone and Creon. In order to 
understand Antigone’s action and attitude, we must 
recall the importance attached by the Greeks to the 
burial of their dead. It is true that in the earliest 
times the denial of burial rites to enemies was not 
wholly unknown, and was not held to be an offense. 
Even in the Iliad, however, a truce is made with the 
Trojans so that they may bury their slain. Achilles, 
too, does not carry out his threat against Hector; 


IIO PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

nay, the gods themselves protect Hector’s corpse 
and give aid in its surrender. Among the Athenians, 
the sacredness of the duty of burial was inculcated 
from an early date. Solon decreed that any one 
finding an unburied corpse must at least strew dust 
over it. Children whom he released from other 
duties toward a parent who urged them to commit 
certain wrongs, were never released from the duty 
of burying their parents. That even public ene¬ 
mies were shown the last honor, we learn from the 
burial of the Persians slain at Marathon, and 
of the Spartans who fell at Thermopylae. Again, 
after the naval battle of Arginusae, we find six 
Athenian commanders suffering the death penalty 
because the bodies of the slain had not been col¬ 
lected and given burial rites. The only limitation 
to this custom of honoring the dead was that which 
forbade interment within the borders of their native 
land to sacrilegious persons, or to traitors who had 
borne arms against their fellow-citizens. Even this 
limitation gradually became more and more repug¬ 
nant to the moral sense of the people. The tragedy 
of “ Antigone ” is based on the conflict between the 
civil law, which Creon seeks to maintain, and the 
higher moral sense, which makes the burial of Poly- 
nices the sacred and inviolable duty of the nearest 
of his kin; namely, his two sisters, Antigone and 
Ismene. 

Now as to the psychology of the play. As we 
have said, the characters which best serve to show 
Sophocles’ psychological ability are those of Creon 












PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMAS 


III 


and Antigone, although a certain type of womanly 
nature is also placed before us in the character of 
Ismene. 

Creon is a man whose mind is wholly possessed 
by the consciousness of his supreme authority. 
Already filled with anger by the news that his 
orders concerning the body of Polynices have been 
disobeyed, he becomes more embittered by the 
murmurs of the Chorus, the arguments of Antigone 
and Ismene, the pleading of Haemon, the warning 
of Teresius the Seer. He insults the Chorus, derides 
Antigone, orders Ismene to die with her sister even 
though he knows that she has had no share in that 
sister’s disobedience, threatens to compel Haemon 
to witness the execution of Antigone, slanders the 
prophet, blasphemes the gods themselves. It is 
only when Haemon, having failed in his attempt to 
kill his father, kills himself; when Eurydice, 
Haemon’s mother, hearing of her son’s death, com¬ 
mits suicide, cursing as she dies the husband who 
has caused her sorrow,, that Creon bows in sub¬ 
mission to a power greater than his own and longs 
for death as a release from his despair and self- 
reproach, 

it t! U 

LTGO , ITCO 

c fxivrjTco /jLopwv 6 koXKlgt* epcov 
epol repfiLav ayuv apepov.” 1 

Surely this is a very human picture and one that 
shows most clearly the havoc made by passion in 

a. “Let it come, let it come, let my last fate appear bring¬ 
ing most happily to me the close of my days.” 


112 


PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


the soul of man. Creon does not apparently con¬ 
demn Antigone through wanton cruelty, but rather 
through short-sightedness and failure to weigh the 
circumstances of the case. His self-love, however, 
makes it impossible for him to acknowledge his 
mistake, and the fact that others criticize, even 
oppose him, goads his self-love into a fury which 
leads through crime to self-reproach and despair. 
He loves both his wife and his son, but pride holds 
this love in check until grief frees it by the touch 
of death. 

Antigone is the counterpart of Creon. Unlike 
him, she makes the divine law superior to the hu¬ 
man, and determines to honor the gods and to dis¬ 
charge her duty towards her brother, cost what 
it may. She scorns the weakness of Ismene, she 
is filled with contempt for Creon. Yet, stern and 
harsh as she appears at first, her womanly nature 
is clearly manifested later on in the play. The con¬ 
sciousness of fulfilling a sacred duty gives her 
strength to bury Polynices in defiance of Creon’s 
orders; this same consciousness upholds her when 
she stands before Creon to be judged; and pride 
prevents her from seeking mercy by an allusion to 
her betrothal with his son. When all is over, how¬ 
ever, and she realizes that both lover and life are 
lost to her, she bewails her lot with all a woman’s 
anguish. Few lines in either ancient or modern 
poetry are more beautiful than those in which she 
bemoans her fate. She is going to death unwedded 
and unwept, condemned by an unjust human law 


PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMAS II3 

for having revered the law of the gods. The last 
and the most wretched of her race, she thus greets 
the sepulchre in which she is to be buried alive: 

“ 03 Tvpfios, 0) WfMfrelov, 03 KTaaKa 4 >T]s 
o'Urjcns aeicfrpovaos, ol iropevopcu 
irpos tovs epavTijs.” 1 

The fact that having entered the tomb her energy 
returns and she cuts the thread of her own life, in 
no way detracts from her womanliness, but simply 
rounds out her character as a Greek maiden of the 
heroic type. 

Ismene is a woman with whom, perhaps, we 
moderns are more familiar. Yielding, affectionate, 
even self-sacrificing, her bravery is shown more in 
suffering than in action. 

Haemon, too, is thoroughly human in his love for 
Antigone as well as in his conduct towards Creon. 
How natural is the scene in which approaching his 
father with filial respect, he allows this respect to 
be changed into indignation and resentment be¬ 
cause of Creon’s treatment of Antigone! How true 
to life, also, is the scene in the tomb! If, in his 
despair at finding Antigone dead, he seeks to kill 
Creon, the frenzy is but momentary and is avenged 
upon himself. 

Even the wife of Creon, who appears upon the 
stage but for a moment, leaves a deep and abiding 
impression; she is so wholly a mother who cannot 

1 “ O tomb, O bridal chamber, O excavated, ever-guarded 
dwelling, where I go to mine own! ” 


114 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

bear to survive her last remaining child. 

If we turn from ancient to modern drama, we find 
in Moliere one who knew human nature well, at 
least in so far as it displays itself to 
Moliere the eyes of the spectator. His “ Avare ” 
furnishes a good example of this knowledge. 
Harpagon is the important character of the play, 
the others appearing to be intended by Moliere to 
show the avariciousness of the miser as a father, 
a master, and a lover. Harpagon has two children, 
Cleante and Elise. He wishes Elise to marry an 
old man who is willing to take her without a mar¬ 
riage portion. He refuses money to Cleante and 
intends himself to wed Mariane with whom Cleante 
is in love. The piece ends happily with a double 
wedding, Elise marrying Valere, to whom she had 
become engaged without her father’s knowledge, 
and Cleante becoming the husband of Mariane. 7 

Each scene of the play shows a new phase of 
the miser’s passion. He accuses the servants of in¬ 
juring his furniture by hard rubbing; he forbids 
them to give invited guests wine unless they ask 
for it a second time; he does not want his children 
to know where he has hidden his money. Reputa¬ 
tion, children, the girl he wishes to marry, — all 
are of small value when compared with his “ chere 
cassette.” His character is probably best shown 
by his own words when he finds that this “ cassette ” 
has been stolen; the monologue occurs in Act IV.: 

“ Helas! mon pauvre argent; on m’a prive de toi; et 
puisque tu m’es enleve, j’ai perdu mon support, ma 


PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMAS 115 

consolation, ma joie; tout est fini pour moi, je n 7 en puis 
plus; je me meurs, je suis mort, je suis enterre.” 1 

The character is exaggerated to be sure, yet we 
wonder if there has not been many a Harpagon 
willing to sacrifice his love and duty and honor 
in his frenzied search for gold. 

Perhaps English drama can give us no better 
psychological study than Shakespeare’s “ Macbeth.” 
In this play the great dramatist has 
penetrated the very depths of the hu- Shake ~ 
man heart and shown us the struggle 
there enacted between good and evil. Both 
Macbeth and his wife are intensely human charac¬ 
ters, and the bonds of affection and confidence that 
unite them throughout the play, claim an involun¬ 
tary sympathy and shed a softening influence over 
the entire tragedy. 

Macbeth’s character is a strange mingling of 
good and evil qualities, and it is to the contending 
of these qualities that the play owes its intense and 
gloomy interest. Lady Macbeth well describes her 
husband’s character in Act I., Scene V.: 

“ Glamis thou art, and Cawdor; and shalt be 
What thou art promised. — Yet do I fear thy nature; 
It is too full o’ the milk of human kindness, 

To catch the nearest way. Thou wouldst be great, 
Art not without ambition; but without 

1 “Alas! my poor money; they have deprived me of you; 
and since you are taken from me, I have lost my support, my 
consolation, my joy; all is over for me, I am dying, I am 
dead, I am buried.” 


Il6 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


The illness should attend it; what thou wouldst highly 
That wouldst thou holily; wouldst not play false, 
And yet wouldst wrongly win: thou’dst have, great 
Glamis, 

That which cries, 1 Thus must thou do, if thou have 
it’; 

And that which rather thou dost fear to do, 

Thou wishest should be undone.” 

He is a gallant soldier, a wise leader, naturally, 
as Lady Macbeth tells us, “ full o’ the milk of hu¬ 
man kindness ”; nor is he insensible to the claims 
of gratitude, kinship, fealty, and courtesy. In 
Act I., Scene VII., he says to Lady Macbeth, allud¬ 
ing to the projected murder of King Duncan: 

“We will proceed no further in this business; 

He (Duncan) hath honour’d me of late.” 

Again, in the same scene, he soliloquizes: 

“.He’s here (meaning Duncan) in double trust; 

First, as I am his kinsman and his subject; 

Strong both against the deed: then, as his host 
Who should against his murderer shut the door, 

Not bear the knife myself.” 

Yet Macbeth is no mere instrument of evil, tempted 
to entertain the first suggestions of crime by super¬ 
natural arts, and forced to its execution by his 
wife’s more determined spirit. Rather is he the 
victim of a guilty ambition, already familiar with 
half-formed thoughts of crime when he is first ac¬ 
costed by the Weird Sisters. Their predictions 



PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMAS 11 7 

were but the occasions that gave a more distinct 
form to the unhallowed aspirations which origi¬ 
nated in Macbeth’s own evil desires, and the un¬ 
daunted spirit of Lady Macbeth served only as “ a 
spur to his intent ” to put these desires into execu¬ 
tion. It is worthy of notice, too, that even as he 
proceeds from the commission of one crime to that 
of another, his sense of right and wrong is never 
distorted, his conscience never seared into insensi¬ 
bility; not even to himself does he disguise or pal¬ 
liate his guilt. 

As for Lady Macbeth, she is not a mere fiend, 
but a woman of high intellect, bold spirit, and lofty 
desires, — untainted by any grovelling vice, or 
grosser passion. Her guilt and cruelty come not 
from malignity or revenge, but from the thirst for 
power, both for herself and for her husband, by 
which she is consumed. It is by her intensity of 
purpose that she overpowers Macbeth’s mind and 
beats down his doubts and fears; nay, the very 
voice of her own conscience is drowned in the whirl¬ 
wind of her thoughts. A lady of high rank, left 
much alone, she has been accustomed td fill her 
idle hours with day-dreams of ambition; thus she 
mistakes the courage of fantasy for the power of 
bearing the consequences of actual guilt. Even in 
the murder scene, Act II., Scene II., when the ob¬ 
durate inflexibility of purpose with which she drives 
Macbeth to the execution of their project and her 
indifference to blood-shedding and death inspire 
unmitigated disgust and horror, one has the invol- 


Il8 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

untary consciousness that she is forcing herself to 
act as she does rather than yielding to natural de¬ 
pravity. Notice the words she utters in the moment 
of extreme horror: 

“ Had he (Duncan) not resembled my father as he slept, 
I had done it! ” (i.e. murdered him). 

Hers has been a mock fortitude, strong to think 
deeds of blood but weak to perform them. If she 
compels herself to enter the chamber of death into 
which Macbeth will not go, may we not think that 
it is to save her husband from being suspected of 
the murderous deed? Indeed from the moment of 
Duncan’s assassination she is no longer the pre¬ 
sumptuous, determined woman that she was in the 
earlier scenes of the play. Knowing by her own 
experience the torment which her husband endures, 
she tries by her own reasoning and her sympathy 
to alleviate his suffering. If during the supper 
scene, when Macbeth beholds the spectre of the 
murdered Banquo and his reason appears unsettled 
by extreme dismay and horror, she utters words of 
rebuke and remonstrance, it is only to recall him 
to himself. Once the guests are dismissed, she is 
silent save for submissive answers to his questions 
and an entreaty that he will seek repose. But the 
strain is too great for her to bear it long; her fem¬ 
inine nature and delicate structure are soon over¬ 
whelmed by the enormous pressure of her crime. 
Her keener feelings sink under the struggle that 
leads Macbeth on to further wickedness. She dies, 


PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMAS II9 

perhaps by her own hand, surely giving no sign of 
the guilty deeds committed by her husband and 
herself. Almost the last words we hear from her 
lips, Act V., Scene I., prove that the fatalism of 
her waking hours marks as well the delirium of her 
sleep: 

“ What’s done, cannot be undone.” 

A certain Catholic writer calls “ Macbeth ” a 
study in sin, and holds that it lends itself readily 
to an analysis which corresponds in a 
remarkable way with the treatment of A.studym 
the same subject (sin) by the greatest 
of Christian philosphers, St. Thomas Aquinas . 1 
Let us see if a study of the tragedy will bear out 
this assertion. 

Considering sin from the point of view of moral 
theology, we have first temptation, secondly sin, 
and thirdly the consequences of sin; all these may 
be found in “ Macbeth.” 

First, the temptation. “ The devil,” says St. 
Thomas, “ tempts by exploring the inner condition 
of a man, that he may work on that 
vicious propensity to which a man is ^^ pta " 
more prone.” The witches, represent¬ 
ing the powers of evil, seize on Macbeth’s growing 
passion (ambition) and nurture it by their pre¬ 
tended prophecies. Owing to their peculiar relation 
to time and space, spirits can convey the knowledge 

1 “Macbeth, a Study in Sin,” A. S. Pardie: Catholic World, 
Nov. 1919. 


120 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

drawn from one mind to the mind of another by 
means of transmission simpler than those used by 
men. This explains the “ prophecy ” that Macbeth 
would be thane of Cawdor; the collation of the 
thaneship had already been decreed by Duncan. 
Seeing that it will serve to heighten his ambition, 
the witches go a step further and foretell the king- 
ship which they foresee Macbeth’s perverted nature 
will eventually seek and grasp. This foresight, one 
must note in passing, comes from their general 
knowledge of human nature, not from any specific 
knowledge of what is actually passing in Macbeth’s 
mind. 

A second cause of sin, says St. Thomas, is 
“ homo.” This cause the tragedy furnishes in the 
person of Lady Macbeth. She knows her hus¬ 
band’s weakness better than he does himself — 
apparently a feminine prerogative exercised the 
world over and first manifested in the Garden of 
Eden. It is her wild and remorseless determination 
that carries her rough-shod over the dictates of 
right reason, and “ screws to the sticking place ” 
the courage of her husband whose will is not yet 
completely divorced from reason. Macbeth’s con¬ 
science, his ethical conscience, makes a last appeal. 
He foresees the punishment which will be eternal 
as well as that which will dog him during his mortal 
life. He recognizes the claims of his kinship to 
Duncan and those of his own high reputation. Yet 
he has no genuine desire to withdraw from the com¬ 
mission of his contemplated crime and his wife’s 


PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMAS 


12 I 


terrible determination steels his nerve to action. 
Temptation has triumphed; a human will has been 
assailed and broken; the devil and the world have 
played their parts in the undoing of the victim. 

The sin. “ Consummatio peccati est in opere.” 
Macbeth is walking in the shadowed court, waiting 
for the moment when he will be called 
to fill “ the perfect measure of his sin.” Sin 
A last grace is offered him. Banquo comes to him 
with new tokens of Duncan’s good will. But the 
grace is refused, the royal kiss given to a traitor. 
Then there is a final interior protest against the sin 
in the grim hallucination by means of which his 
“ imagination deals a first avenging blow 

“ Is this a dagger which I see before me, 

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch 
thee. 

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still 

And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, 

Which was not so before. There! no such thing: 

It is the bloody business which informs 
Thus to mine eyes.” (Act II., Scene I.) 

This protest, too, is unavailing and Duncan’s blood 
seals Macbeth’s compact with the devil. 

The consequences. The first general effect of 
sin, St. Thomas tells us, is “ corruptio naturae.’’ 
Man is the subject of a three-fold natu¬ 
ral good: the intrinsic principles of his fences 
nature which constitute him a rational 
being, the natural tendency to the performance of 
virtuous acts, and the gratuitous gift of original 


122 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

justice. Sin cannot deprive him of the first, for no 
morally bad act can make him less than man. The 
third was lost to him by Adam’s fall, the effect of 
which descended to Adam’s posterity. It is to the 
second that St. Thomas refers when he says that 
the first general effect of sin is the corruption of 
man’s nature. This truth is well exemplified in the 
moral condition of Macbeth during the last three 
acts of the tragedy. “ Things, bad begun,” he him¬ 
self tells us, (Act III., Scene II.) “ make strong 
themselves by ill.” His hold on good grows weaker 
as he habituates himself to evil; his reason hesi¬ 
tates to act, his will is armed against good. He has 
* rebelled against God and man and he merits punish¬ 
ment from both; hence we find him oppressed from 
within and from without. There is no sign of con¬ 
trition, however, for he has smothered every tend¬ 
ency toward good. The tragedy leaves him a moral 
wreck, deprived of everything except the animal 
instinct to save his life: 

“ They have tied me to a stake. I cannot fly, 

But, bear-like, I must fight the course.’’ (Act V., 
Scene VII.) 

This is the human punishment of Macbeth’s sin; 
upon the divine, one ventures not to speculate. 

If we have discussed at so great length this one 
tragedy, it is because the character of Macbeth 
seems to illustrate both clearly and forcibly the 
power given to a dramatist by a knowledge of hu¬ 
man nature. Is not the story of Macbeth the story 


PSYCHOLOGICAL DRAMAS 


123 


of fallen man? Man, too, is tempted by the devil, 
by his own passions, often alas! by the woman 
whom God gave him for a helpmate. Man too, fre¬ 
quently yields in the combat. But, thank God, we 
may hope that, at least in many cases, contrition 
brings him back to the God whom he had offended 
and thus saves him from the eternal punishment 
due to sin. Shakespeare’s “ Macbeth ” is in truth 
a great tragedy, and the secret of its greatness lies 
in the fidelity with which it places before us the 
hidden recesses of the human heart. 


Suggestive Questions 

1. Upon what does Sophocles base his tragedy of “ Antigone ”? 

2. Are the important characters in “Antigone” true to life? 

3. Is Moliere’s “ Avare ” psychologically sound? 

4. What is the strong point in Shakespeare’s character of 

Macbeth ? 

5. Is the character of Lady Macbeth well drawn? 

6. Explain the psychological reason for the introduction of 

the Weird Sisters in the tragedy of “ Macbeth.” 

7. Is the tragedy of “ Macbeth ” a study in sin ? 

8. Prove that Macbeth himself is no mere instrument of evil. 

9. Does Lady Macbeth serve only as “ a spur to his (Mac¬ 

beth’s) intent”? 

10. What evidence does the play afford of Macbeth’s having 
no contrition? 


VI 

DRAMATIC LITERATURE 



HE assertion that “ the playhouse has no mo- 


-■* nopoly of the dramatic form/’ seems to most 
of us a hard saying, since the word “ drama ” in¬ 
voluntarily connotes “ theatre yet we readily 
admit that there does exist a deal of dramatic liter¬ 
ature not to be read by the footlights of the stage. 

First on the list of this literature stands the 
closet-drama, well defined as “ a play not intended 


to be played.” It is written for the 
reader rather than for the stage, and 
uncontaminated by any subservience to 


Closet- 

drama 


theatre, actor, or audience. Perhaps it is its very 
freedom which has made the closet-drama fail to 
justify itself. Even as physical wrestling develops 
a man’s body, so does mental wrestling develop his 
mind. The necessity of grappling with the difficul¬ 
ties attending actual production forces the drama¬ 
tist to put forth his whole strength. By making his 
work easier we do not help him, but rather hinder 
him from great achievement. Let us consider for 
a moment the following passage, quoted by Dr. 
Matthews, as a claim set up for closet-drama by 
one of its admirers : 1 “ As the closet-dramatist is 


1 “ A Study of the Drama,” Brander Matthews. 

124 



SCENE FROM DIAMOND JUBILEE PAGEANT 
College Campus, Mt. St. Vincent, New York 

















DRAMATIC LITERATURE 12 5 

not bound to consider the practical exigencies of 
the theatre, to consult the prejudices of the man¬ 
ager or the spectators, fill the pockets of the com¬ 
pany, or provide a role for a star performer, he has, 
in many ways, a freer hand than the professional 
playwright. He need not sacrifice truth of char¬ 
acter and probability of plot to the need of highly 
accentuated situations. He does not have to con¬ 
sider whether a speech is too long, too ornate in 
diction, too deeply thoughtful for recitation by an 
actor. If the action lags at certain points, let it 
lag. In short, as the aim of the closet-dramatist 
is other than the playwright’s, so his methods may 
be independent.” 

We grant the truth of the passage, but what the 
admirer evidently considers advantages seem to 
us to be disadvantages, since they tend to foster 
the unwillingness, or to prove the inability, of the 
closet-dramatist to acquire that craft of the theatre 
which makes the real dramatist what he is. Again 
if the aim of the closet-dramatist is other than that 
of the playwright, why call his achievement drama? 
If he merely wishes to recite a poem or tell a story, 
why not recite the one or tell the other himself 
instead of bothering with actors? 

We said a moment ago that we granted the truth 
of the passage quoted by Dr. Matthews, but we 
must modify this statement for the passage contains 
one sentence not to our liking. “ He (the closet- 
dramatist) need not sacrifice truth of character and 
probability of plot to the need of highly accentu- 


126 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


ated situations.” This would seem to imply that 
the dramatist who intends to have his plays pro¬ 
duced must make this sacrifice. Is this true? The 
dramatist cannot draw his character in detail as 
does the novelist; he must rather, as a clever 
painter, illustrate it by a few suggestive strokes; 
yet these strokes may surely give a true likeness. 
He must, too, owing to limitations of time and 
space, content himself with presenting to his audi¬ 
ence such vital points of his story as shall lead to 
a satisfactory development of the plot within the 
time and space allowed him; but does this con¬ 
densation necessarily make for improbability? It 
seems to us that it tends to restrain rather than to 
encourage flights of fancy. 

It is a significant fact that the closet-drama ap¬ 
pears in the history of literature when there is a 
T ., . divorce between literature and the 

and theatre. We find it first in the Rome 

Theatre 0 f Nero when, the stage being given 

over to vulgar spectacles, Seneca seems to have 
written his plays for recitation by an elocutionist. 
Again the closet-drama appears in Italy when men 
of letters, despising the miracle play and the com¬ 
edy of masks, the two types of drama then popular 
on the stage, sought to imitate the Greek tragedy 
or the Latin comedy, regardless of the conditions 
of the contemporary theatre. As late as the early 
nineteenth century it emerged in England, when 
adaptations of Kotzebue and, somewhat later, of 
Scribe and his collaborators, formed the chief staple 


DRAMATIC LITERATURE 12 7 

of the stage. One is willing to justify its appear¬ 
ance in Nero’s Rome, one can understand how it 
came to be written during the Renaissance, but 
there seems little reason for its emerging in the 
nineteenth century, and none at all for its con¬ 
tinued existence in the twentieth. On the one hand, 
the dramatic poet of today has no right to despise 
the stage for which great poets have written; on 
the other, he must comply with the conditions of 
this stage if, like his successful colleagues, he wishes 
to receive its rewards. 

Swinburne asserts that when he wrote plays 
it was “ with a view to their being acted at the 
Globe, the Red Bull, or the Blackfriars that is 
the playhouses with which the Elizabethans had to 
be content, and to the conditions of which they were 
forced to conform their plays. Discussing his own 
“ Marino Faliero,” he even goes so far as to declare 
that this dramatic poem, “ hopelessly impossible as 
it is from the point of view of modern stage-craft, 
could hardly have been found too untheatrical, too 
utterly given over to thought without action, by 
the audience which applauded Chapman’s elo¬ 
quence, — the fervid and inexhaustible declamation 
which was offered and accepted as a substitute for 
study of character and interest of action.” Grant¬ 
ing the truth of this statement that Chapman’s 
plays were applauded by the Elizabethan audience, 
may it not be possible that it was the melodramatic 
plot rather than the “ fervid and inexhaustible de- 
clamation” that won popular applause or at least 


128 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 


endurance? After all one naturally looks for elo¬ 
quence in the oration and seeks declamation on the 
public platform; on the stage one expects, just as 
naturally, to find “ study of character ” and “ in¬ 
terest of action.” 

If we confine ourselves to the definition of “ dra¬ 
matic poems not to be acted,” many of the so-called 
closet-dramas must be removed from 

Poems tlC Tennyson’s “ Becket ” for in¬ 

stance, Browning’s “ Strafford ” and “ A 
Blot in the ’ Scutcheon,” and Shelley’s “ Cenci.” 
Tennyson certainly intended “ Becket,” as well 
as his other plays to be acted; Browning wrote his 
two plays mentioned to be acted by Macready; and 
Shelley had Miss O’Neill in view when he wrote the 
“ Cenci.” The plays failed in the theatre probably 
because their authors wrote for the reader as well 
as for the spectator. To quote Stendhal’s criti¬ 
cism of Manzoni’s dramatic poems, the “ characters 
seem to be held back by the pleasure of finding 
fine words.” In short, it is the psychology of these 
literary men that is at fault; one does not pause in 
the crises of life to find the best literary form for 
the expression of one’s feelings. 

There are dramatic poems of another class which 
can be called closet-dramas only by stretching the 
definition; such are the attempted resuscitations of 
Greek tragedy exemplified by Arnold’s “ Empedocles 
on Etna ” and Swinburne’s “ Atlanta in Calydon.” 
The French call them “ pastiches,” but the best 
name that we have ever found is the one given by 


DRAMATIC LITERATURE 129 

Brander Matthews, “ exercises in poetry to be 
ranked with the anatomies of the old painters.” 1 
It is impossible for a modern poet to become a 
Greek of centuries ago, and hence his work, how¬ 
ever ingenious, can be at best but an external imi¬ 
tation, lacking as it does the genetic principle to 
be found in the character of the people and the age 
to which the play naturally belongs. One reads 
such plays with keenest pleasure, but on the stage 
it is a somewhat perilous undertaking to handle 
other than the modern dramatic form. Poetic 
drama is in truth a thing to be desired, but it must 
be poetic drama mind you, not merely dramatic 
poetry. So long as the latter makes no pretense to 
be other than it is, we are willing to acknowledge 
its legitimacy and to accord it its full meed of 
praise. It is only when it claims to be what it is 
not, that we pronounce it illegitimate. 

Poetic drama, we have said, is a thing to be de¬ 
sired. In the early days of dramatic expansion, the 
masterpieces of dramatic art were poetic both in 
theme and in treatment. But poetry we must re¬ 
member is more than versifying; there are many 
prosy plays in verse and many poetic ones in prose. 
Think for a moment of Alfred de Musset’s “ On ne 
badine pas avec l’amour ” or Aldrich’s “Mercedes”; 
they are both written in prose, yet who could hesitate 
to call them poetic? Even that most lyric of all 
Shakespeare’s comedies, “ As You Like It,” is 
largely in prose. It is well worth one’s while to 

1 “ A Study of the Drama,” Brander Matthews. 


130 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

study Shakespeare’s use of language, his commin¬ 
gling of blank verse with rhythmic prose and the 
plain speech of daily life. He knew so well how his 
characters would speak as real men that he escaped 
the snare into which many a modern poet would 
have fallen; that, namely, of sustaining at the higher 
level of blank verse the whole of such plays as “ As 
You Like It,” “ Julius Caesar,” or “ Macbeth.” 
Is not this another proof of the benefit accruing to 
the dramatist from a knowledge of psychology? 

If we extend dramatic literature to the novel, the 
field becomes at once immensely enlarged. Dr. 

Austin O’Malley makes a clever distinc- 
Drama and t i on b e t W een the drama and the novel in 

Novel 

an article published in “ America.” 3 
“ In the drama as differentiated from the novel,” he 
tells us, “ an appeal is made to the emotions through 
the senses directly; in the novel the appeal is made 
through the intellect and imagination by narration; 
the drama opposes artistic but literal reality to the 
novel’s convention of artistic speech. . . . The 
novelist may partly explain his characters and 
deeds; the dramatist cannot avail himself of this 
method of expression. . . . The drama . . . char¬ 
acterizes by action, the novel by exposition.” 
Finally, says Dr. O’Malley, and this statement we 
would like to emphasize, “ The only psychologists 
in the world now, outside the Scholastics, are the 
novelists and dramatists.” And why? Because 

1 “ How the Novel Differs from the Drama,” A. O’Malley, 
M.D., “America,” Mar. 19, 1921. 


DRAMATIC LITERATURE 131 

they are the only ones who study human nature in 
all its aspects, who seek to know, not only man’s 
words and deeds, but even to penetrate into his 
most secret thoughts and feelings. There is this 
difference, however, between the novelist and the 
dramatist. The dramatist depicts men and women, 
more or less like those one meets in real life, accord¬ 
ing to his genius in portraying them, and leaves the 
spectator to divine their thoughts and feelings from 
their words and deeds as one learns the cause from 
the effects. The novelist, having greater time and 
space at his disposal, may save the reader the 
trouble of such divination by an analysis of char¬ 
acter which makes evident the reason for both 
words and deeds. The novel gives a wide view of 
life and uses complex elements; the drama takes 
a narrower view and usually selects material almost 
as simple as that of the short story. 

This complexity of elements is one reason why 
the ordinary novel does not lend itself more readily 
to dramatization. Take such a novel as Thomas 
Hardy’s “ The Return of the Native.” It surely 
contains several dramatic situations; the meeting 
of Eustacia Vye and Clym Yeobright after the 
mummers’ play; Mrs. Yeobright’s death with the 
tragic circumstances that lead up to it, — her* recog¬ 
nition of her son in the furze-cutter, her coming to 
his house while he is asleep and his wife is enter¬ 
taining Wildeve, the refusal of the wife to admit 
her, Clym’s finding her on the heath as he is on his 
way to be reconciled with her, the appearance of 


132 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

Eustacia and Wildeve at her death in the old hut on 
the heath, and finally the message given to Susan 
Nunsuch by the boy: “ I’ve got something to tell’ee, 
mother. That woman asleep there (the dead Mrs. 
Yeobright) walked along with me today; and she 
said I was to say that I had seed her, and that she 
was a broken-hearted woman and cast off by her 
son, and then I came home.” Intensely dramatic, 
too, is the moment in which Clym shows the reddle- 
man the dead bodies of Eustacia and Wildeve, and 
well worthy of the greatest tragedian are Clym’s 
words with which the scene closes: “ She (Eustacia) 
is the second woman I have killed this year. I was 
a great cause of my mother’s death; and I am the 
chief cause of hers. . . . My great regret is that 
for what I have done no man or law can punish 
me! ” 

There are dramatic possibilities also in many of 
the lighter novels such as Harland’s “ The Cardi¬ 
nal’s Snuffbox ” and “ My Friend Prospero,” or 
Leslie Moore’s “ The Peacock Feather.” Perhaps 
some dramatist of today will realize that these 
stories would make morally clean as well as artistic 
and entertaining plays. 

It is in the short story, however, that one gets 
closest to the drama. This story, like the drama, 
has limitations of time and space and 

Short Story mUSt seize U P 0n tlie vital P oints ©f the 

tale it wishes to tell. It resembles 
the drama, too, in the swiftness of its action, 
passing rapidly as it does from the first 


DRAMATIC LITERATURE 1 33 

meeting to the sound of wedding bells, or from the 
initiation of a great scheme to its successful com¬ 
pletion. Some of these short stories are very 
cleverly written and many of them might furnish 
our greater novelists with more correct views of 
life than these latter seem to possess. We have 
read several such stories of late and have found 
displayed in them no slight knowledge of psychol¬ 
ogy. Like an oasis in a desert, such a sound com¬ 
mon sensible tale occasionally appears in a mag¬ 
azine otherwise given to literature -that one would 
rather avoid reading; it is a pity that this should 
be the case since it keeps the tale from being known 
to those who would appreciate its worth. Some¬ 
times, too, strange as it may seem to those who 
decry Catholic fiction, one of these clever short 
stories finds its way into a Catholic magazine. 
Such a one appears in the Extension Magazine for 
March, 1921. It is written by Mabel Osborne and 
is called “ In Perfect Accord.” We would like to 
discuss it at least briefly in order to show the pos¬ 
sibilities of the clean short story and the help that 
correct psychological principles may give to its 
writing. 

The story itself is simple. Robert Fleming, a 
sedate bachelor of thirty-four, falls in love with 
Clorinda Gayle, a young lady some ten years 
younger; she reciprocates his love and they are 
married. As his wealth and influence increase, he 
becomes more and more absorbed in his business 
until at last he is rarely seen with his wife at those 


134 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

social functions which apparently claim most of 
her time and attention. After four years of mar¬ 
ried life he becomes suspicious of his wife’s trips to 
the country, trips made alone in her own little 
car, and he determines to follow her. As would 
probably be the case in real life, he gives no thought 
to his neglect of her but becomes filled with wrath 
over her seeming misconduct. In a hot chase, he 
loses her through the bursting of a tire, a mishap 
which delays him for some considerable time. 
Finally he sees her empty car on the side of the 
road in front of an unpretentious green cottage. 
Jumping from his car, he goes towards the cottage 
and almost collides with his wife, who comes run¬ 
ning around the corner of the house, engaged in the 
very innocent pastime of playing with a bull pup. 
She invites her husband to lunch and begs him to 
pretend that they have never met before so that 
they may see whether or not they will become 
friends. Some of the conversation that follows is 
worth quoting. 

“ How do you like my little green cottage? ” 

“ Very well.” 

“ My husband doesn’t like it.” 

He says nothing. She bids him play the game to 
pay for his lunch. Then he says politely: 

“ You are married? ” 

“ But certainly. I can tell that you are by your 
look of wisdom.” 

“ You think that marriage is an aid to wisdom? ” 

“ I think it is a school where learning is compulsory.” 


DRAMATIC LITERATURE 


135 


“ That savors of cynicism.” 

“ Cynicism is embraced in the curriculum of the 
school.” 

“ And I suppose disappointment and disillusion¬ 
ment are also found in this comprehensive 
curriculum.” 

“ Oh, no. And what I said about cynicism was 
horrid. It all depends on the student. The 
branches of learning one pursues are optional.” 

“ Then you have been able to discover some good 
in it? ” 

“ Loads, by observation. Generosity, unselfishness, 
union of interests, exchange of ideas, and most 
of all home-life and companionship.” 

She falters over the word “ companionship ” but 
he remains silent and she suggests talking of “ nice 
things.” Her husband finally insists on knowing 
why she comes to this cottage. She tells him that 
the place belongs to a former stenographer of his, 
Delia Grady, who is married and has an adorable 
baby. Delia being obliged to go to the city once 
every week and having no one with whom to leave 
the baby, Clorinda has offered to take care of it. 
The baby is not there now because Delia’s sister 
has taken it out for the day. When Clorinda’s 
husband asks her why she has done this, she tells 
him that it is because she wants some human in¬ 
terest in her life, that she cannot live on bridge 
parties and matinees and teas and luncheons and 
silly calls. Then she reminds him of their early 
married days when they talked over his business 


136 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

affairs and her social interests, and the story ends 
happily with a mutual resolution to get back to 
“ home-life and companionship.” 

We make no plea for the literary value of the 
story, although it is fairly well written, but we would 
like to emphasize the sensible way in which the 
writer deals with marital problems. First of all she 
avoids the “ eternal triangle,” omitting from her 
story the second man — or woman — whose pres¬ 
ence makes a happy ending possible only by way 
of death or sin. Secondly, she gives the wife suf¬ 
ficient common sense to keep from airing her home 
troubles and a conscience which prevents her from 
seeking relief for her loneliness in illicit pleasures. 
Thirdly, she shows that, in spite of the friction of 
daily life, love lives on in the heart and needs but 
little coaxing to make it burn with all the ardor of 
its early flame. The story is perfectly true to life 
up to the point of mutual explanations; might it 
not be better for humanity if the picture continued 
truthful unto the end? That it could so continue 
if people would only live up to their higher nature, 
is clearly shown by the writer, whose concepts of 
life might well be used by other writers both of 
drama and of fiction. 


Suggestive Questions 

1 . Is the freedom accorded the writer of closet-drama a help 

or a hindrance? 

2 . What does the closet-drama denote? 

3 . In what are the writers of closet-drama at fault? 


DRAMATIC LITERATURE I37 

4. Why are resuscitations of Greek tragedy unsuited to the¬ 

atrical production? 

5. Differentiate the drama from the novel. 

6. Why does the average novel fail to lend itself to dramati¬ 

zation ? 

7. Give points of similarity existing between the short story 

and the drama. 


VII 

POINTS OF VIEW 


T HERE is probably nothing that so alters the 
appearance of an object as a change in one’s 
point of view. Seen from a distance, a giant may 
seem a pigmy, a castle a wayside hut. This truth 
holds good in the mental as well as in the physical 
world and may well be applied to dramatic art. 

The drama as conceived in the Ages of Faith, 
was intended by the Church to be a means of teach¬ 
ing men the truths of Faith and of familiarizing 
them with the things of God. In the hands of 
many a modern playwright it is employed to pander 
to man’s lower nature, to place before him in pic¬ 
tures all too vivid the concupiscence of the eyes, 
the concupiscence of the flesh, and the pride of life. 
By the one, it was meant to be an instrument for 
good; by the other, it is too frequently converted 
into an instrument for evil. 

While we quite agree with Dr. A. W. Ward in 
holding the liturgy of the Catholic Church to be 

The Holy the ma i n source the modern 

sacrifice of drama, we are not at all willing to 
the Mass accept some of the statements either 

made or quoted by him in his work “ A History of 
English Dramatic Literature.” 1 For instance, he 

i Vol. I. 

138 




POINTS OF VIEW 


139 

quotes as follows Hagenbach, whom he calls “ an 
eminent Protestant ecclesiastical historian,” on the 
subject of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. 1 “ In 
the wide dimensions, which in course of time the 
Mass assumed, there lies a grand, we are almost 
inclined to say an artistic idea. A dramatic pro¬ 
gression is perceptible in all the symbolic processes, 
from the appearance of the celebrant priest at the 
altar (Introibus) and the confession of sins, to the 
Kyrie Eleison, and from this to the grand doxology 
(Gloria in Excelsis), after which the priest turns 
with the Dominus Vobiscum to the congregation, 
calling upon it to pray (Oremus). Next, we listen 
to the reading of the Epistle and the Gospel. Be¬ 
tween the two actions or acts intervenes the Grad- 
uale (a chant), during which the deacon ascends 
the ambon (lectorium). With the Halleluia con¬ 
cludes the first act (Missa catechumenorum); and 
then ensues the Mass in a more special sense 
(Missa fidelium), which begins with the recitation 
of the creed (Credo). Then again a Dominus 
Vobiscum and a prayer, followed by the Offerto- 
rium (Offertory) and, accompanied by further 
ceremonies, the Consecration. The change of sub¬ 
stance — the mystery of mysteries — takes place 
amidst the adoration of the congregation and the 
prayer for the quick and the dead; then, after the 
chant of the Agnus Dei, ensues the Communion 
itself, which is succeeded by prayer and thanks¬ 
giving, the salutation of peace, and the benediction.” 

1 Kirchengeschichte. 


140 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

We will not quarrel with Mr. Hagenbach’s ex¬ 
position of the ceremonies of the Mass, but we 
must take exception to his statement that “ in the 
course of time the Mass assumed wide dimensions.” 
Just what does he mean by this? If he would 
imply that, freed from the persecution of her early 
days, the Church celebrated the Holy Sacrifice with 
more pomp as well as greater publicity, Mr. Hagen- 
bach has simply failed to express himself clearly. 
If, however, he would insinuate that the Mass has 
changed in any of its essential parts since it was 
celebrated by the Apostles, we must accuse him of 
either ignorance or falsehood. Had Mr. Hagen- 
bach ever attended Mass in a poor country church 
or convent chapel, had he ever seen the Holy Sac¬ 
rifice celebrated on the improvised altar of the mis¬ 
sionary, raised temporarily in some hut in the 
wilderness, he might have realized how absolutely 
accidental and unnecessary are the pomp and the 
“ touching chant ” in which he would seem to make 
the Mass consist. Again Mr. Hagenbach is quoted 
as saying “ how the fact that the services of the 
Roman branch of the church were conducted in the 
same Latin tongue illustrates her plan of placing 
their chief effect in symbols rather than in the 
words employed.” Is he ignorant of this other 
fact that for the Consecration, which he himself 
calls “ the mystery of mysteries,” not only words 
but the very ones Christ used at the Last Supper — 
the first Mass — are absolutely necessary? 

Dr. Ward himself says that it would “ be going 


POINTS OF VIEW 


141 

too far to attribute to the dramatic features of the 
service per se attempts actually made to bring this 
feature into stronger relief.” This is a kindly say¬ 
ing for which one must be duly grateful. Again 
he tells us that in the earlier days “ whatsoever en¬ 
riched, expanded or diversified the services was as¬ 
sured a widespread and unstinted welcome; and no 
fear existed of the intrusion of that sense of rid¬ 
icule which, since it was reawakened by the severer 
taste of the Renascence, has in later times cavilled 
at some ornamentations of religious worship as 
redundant and at others as incongruous.” Might 
not Dr. Ward have better attributed the intrusion 
“ of the sense of ridicule ” to the lack of faith on 
the part of the so-called Reformers than to “ the 
severer taste of the Renascence? ” 

Leaving Mr. Hagenbach and Dr. Ward to their 
own opinions, let us ask ourselves the question: 
Are the services of the Catholic Church Liturgy of 
dramatic? The answer will depend on the catho- 
the way in which we use the word dra- hc Church 
matic. If we take it to mean action which appeals 
to the emotions by means of the senses directly, 
then these services are intensely dramatic; if it 
stands for purely imitative action, void of reality, 
then they are not dramatic at all. The Church gives 
to her ritual all possible pomp and grandeur, first 
because such pomp and grandeur befit the worship 
of God; and secondly because she realizes that this 
pomp and grandeur will appeal to her children and 
serve as a means to attract them to the House of 


142 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

God where they will be taught the essentials of 
their Faith and learn to distinguish between these 
essentials and accidentals however beautiful. As 
we have said elsewhere in this paper, the Church is 
a past mistress in psychology; she knows human 
nature as it never could be known by an institu¬ 
tion purely human, and she does not hesitate to use 
this knowledge for the benefit of her children. As 
nothing is too great to be employed in the service 
of God, so nothing is too small. If lights and 
flowers and song appeal to people, let them be used. 
But it is only an emotional appeal. Perhaps; yet 
it may lead to lasting results. How many saints 
now in heaven may trace the beginning of their 
sanctity to some appeal made to their emotions! 

Passing from the dramatic features of the 
Church’s liturgy, let us consider her attitude 
Th c th towarc ^ s actual drama. It is the attitude 
lie church" assumed by her towards all God’s 
Drama 6 creatures; they are to be used in so far 
as they help us to reach God, not to 
be used in so far as they lead us from Him. 

The drama, properly utilized, may become a 
powerful instrument for good. Its aim being to 
portray life and character, it possesses the power 
of inculcating high ideals, of properly evaluating 
the good and the bad, the noble and the base. Ex¬ 
ample has always found place in the foremost rank 
of teachers, and the mimetic life of the stage may 
often serve as a model for the real life of the spec¬ 
tators. 


POINTS OF VIEW 


143 


This being the case, what can one say of the at¬ 
titude of many of the modern playwrights towards 
the drama? Not content with making the theatre 
a place of mere entertainment, not satisfied with tak¬ 
ing from the drama its power of elevating man, 
they have turned the playhouse into a school of 
evil and have converted the drama into a depraving 
force. Dramatic technic, yes, they may be masters 
of that; but their work is a body without a soul, or 
if it has a soul, that soul is stripped of all its noble 
prerogatives and given up as a slave to its sensual 
appetites. 

Mr. Bernard Shaw is one of the writers on this 
so-called dramatic Renascence; let us consider 
some of his views with regard to drama Bernard 
and the stage. We shall quote from shawand 
his Preface to “ Three Plays by the stage 
Brieux,” published by The University Press, Cam¬ 
bridge, U.S.A. Incidentally we should like to men¬ 
tion that two of the three plays we refused to read; 
a very superficial reading of one of them having 
been more than sufficient to convince us that we 
had no further use for M. Brieux however great a 
dramatist Mr. Shaw might pronounce him. But 
to return to Mr. Shaw’s views. “ When I was a 
well-known writer,” he tells us, “ I said that what 
we wanted as the basis of our plays and novels was 
not romance but a really scientific natural history. 
Scientific natural history is not compatible with 
taboo; and as everything connected with sex was 
tabooed, I felt the need for mentioning the forbid- 


144 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

den subjects, not only because of their own impor¬ 
tance, but for the sake of destroying taboo by 
giving it the most violent possible shocks. (He 
certainly has given the shocks.) The same impulse 
is unmistakably active in Zola and his contempo¬ 
raries. (It surely is.) . . . The formula for the 
well made (i.e. the popular) play is so easy that I 
give it for the benefit of any reader who feels 
tempted to try his hand at making the fortune that 
awaits all successful manufacturers in this line. 
(Rather novel to call playwrights “ manufacturers,” 
is it not?) First, you 1 have an idea’ for a dra¬ 
matic situation. ... For instance, the situation of 
an innocent person convicted by circumstances of 
a crime may always be depended upon. If the 
person is a woman, she must be convicted of adul¬ 
tery. (Is this one of Mr. Shaw’s favorite 
“ ideas ” ?) . . . The great dramatist has some¬ 
thing better to do than amuse either himself or his 
audience. He has to interpret life. . . . (He is) 
a ruthless revealer of hidden truth and a mighty 
destroyer of idols. So well does Brieux (one of the 
great dramatists according to Mr. Shaw) know this 
that he has written a play, La Foi, showing how 
truth is terrible to men, and how false religions 
. . . are a necessity to them.” Just which religion, 
or perhaps religions, does M. Brieux hold to be not 
false? 

After telling us that M. Brieux has put upon the 
stage the pros and cons of Malthusianism and even 
discussed thus publicly the diseases attendant upon 


POINTS OF VIEW 


145 

profligacy, Mr. Shaw shows his approval of the 
publicity given to such subjects by saying: “ The 
common sense of the matter is that a public danger 
needs a public warning, and the more public the 
place the more effective the warning. But beyond 
this general consideration there is a special need 
for the warning in the theatre. . . . (The) nurture 
and education (of sex) is, for the present at all 
events, the chief use of the theatre.” Unfortu¬ 
nately, yes; for Mr. Shaw and his followers have 
made it so. Our drama should depict truth surely, 
but is there no truth save that which deals with sin? 
Must the evil that in all probability would other¬ 
wise remain unknown to at least some among the 
spectators be placed upon the public stage? Do we 
teach our boys how to commit burglary in order 
that they may not steal, or make known to our girls 
the ways of a courtesan so that they may remain 
pure? Knowledge of evil too often whets the appe¬ 
tite instead of causing a distaste. Go to ouf prisons, 
our reformatories, our houses of correction. Question 
the inmates as to the cause of their downfall. You 
will find in many instances that the first step in the 
wrong direction was taken after the reading of a bad 
book or the seeing of an improper play. Nay, take 
a shorter journey. Walk along some frequented 
street or avenue in one of our great cities — New 
York will do admirably well — and notice the im¬ 
modest dress and the free manners of the women 
with the consequent lack of respect, even contempt 
and familiarity, on the part of the men. May not 


146 PSYCHOLOGY AND DRAMATIC ART 

the theatre be responsible, at least to some extent, 
for these conditions which mark the degeneracy of 
our age? Man is not only a social but also an imi¬ 
tative animal and the freedom granted to the people 
of stageland is quite liable to be claimed by the 
people of real life. Custom, too, has often the force 
of a law and what it permits many will consider 
legitimate. If custom allows the stage to become a 
clearing-house for sex problems, drama may well 
clothe itself in robes of mourning for it has lost its 
interpreter and its home. 

Mr. Shaw would have us believe that it is only 
convention which has placed a taboo upon the sub¬ 
jects that he would have staged; but 
Tabo ° this is not true. There is a God- 
implanted instinct in every pure minded man or 
woman which shrinks from private, much more 
from public, mention of Mr. Shaw’s “ forbidden 
subjects.” To prove this we have but to put a ques¬ 
tion. Would Mr. Shaw be willing to introduce 
these subjects into a conversation held with a 
woman whose morals are beyond reproach? If he 
possessed sufficient temerity to do so — and for his 
sake we are willing to doubt it — we are quite cer¬ 
tain that the conversation would end abruptly and 
never be renewed. It is not by showing vice that 
we teach virtue. Mr. Shaw can scarcely know hu¬ 
man nature as well as the God who created it, and 
the views of its Creator are altogether opposed to 
those of the great critic. There is rather an un¬ 
comfortable saying found in Scripture about giving 


POINTS OF VIEW 147 

1 

scandal, Mr. Shaw may remember, — that is if 
he reads Scripture. Let the future dramatist make 
use of the technical skill shown by Mr. Shaw’s 
scientific playwrights, but let him exercise it on 
material less unworthy of his art. This is a slogan 
making epoch; why then should not the dramatist 
fashion one for himself? Perhaps he could make 
none better than the one found on the flyleaf of a 
prayer book belonging to an old religious: 

11 God, our Lady, the souls of men.” 


Suggestive Questions 

1. How was the drama regarded by the Catholic Church in 

the ages of Faith? 

2. Are the services of the Catholic Church dramatic? 

3. Why does the Catholic Church appeal to the senses? 

4. What is the attitude of the Catholic Church towards 

drama ? 

5. Are George Bernard Shaw’s views with regard to drama and 

the stage tenable? 

6. What argument would you give against these views? 

7. What are the tendencies of modern drama? 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


Annales du Theatre (1893); “Law of the Drama.” 
Archer, William, “ The Theatrical World.” 

-, “ Play-making.” 

Baker, Geo. P., “ Dramatic Technique.” 

Bradley, A. C., “ Oxford Lectures on Poetry.” 

Brieux, Eugene, “ The Three Daughters of M. Dupont.” 
Crothers, S. M., “ Every Man’s Natural Desire to Be 
Somebody Else.” ( Atlantic Monthly, Nov. 1917) 
Galsworthy, John, “ Some Platitudes Concerning 
Drama.” ( Atlantic Monthly, Dec. 1909) 

-, “ Hall-marked. A Satiric Trifle.” (Atlantic 

Monthly, June, 1914) 

Hagenback, Karl, “ Kirchengeschichte,” Vol. II. 
Hardy, Thos., “ The Return of the Native.” 

Homer, “ Odyssey.” 

Howells, W. D., “ The Story of a Play.” 

Hoyle, “ Tragic Drama of the Greeks.” 

Ibsen, H., “ Ghosts.” 

Klein, J. L., “ Geschichte des Dramas.” 

Lewisohn, Ludwig, “ The Modern Drama.” 

Marlowe, Christopher, “ Faustus.” 

Matthews, Brander, “ A Study of the Drama.” 

-, “ The Case of the Little Theatres.” ( North 

American Review, Nov. 1917) 

-, “ Are the Movies a Menace to the Drama? (North 

American Review, Mar. 1917) 

Mitchell, D. G., “ Dream Life.” 

Moliere, J. B., “ L’Avare.” 


148 







BIBLIOGRAPHY 


149 


Moses, Montrose J., “ The American Dramatist.” 

O’Malley, Dr. Austen, “ How the Novel Differs from 
the Drama.” ( America, Mar. 19, 1921) 

Osborne, Mabel, “ In Perfect Accord.” (Extension 

Magazine , Mar. 1921) 

Pardie, A. S., “ Macbeth, a Study in Sin.” (Catholic 
World, Nov. 1919) 

Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, “ The Workmanship of A 
Midsummer-Night’s Dream.” (North American 
Review, June, 1915) 

Rappoport, A. S., “ The English Drama.” 

Rostand, Edmond, “ Les Romanesques.” 

Schlegel, A. W., “ Lectures on Dramatic Art and Liter¬ 
ature.” 

Shakespeare, William, “ The Two Gentlemen of Verona.” 

-, “ Othello.” 

-, “ Hamlet.” 

-, “ Antony and Cleopatra.” 

-, “ Henry V.” 

-, “ King John.” 

-, “ Merchant of Venice.” 

-, “ Romeo and Juliet.” 

-, “ Macbeth.” 

Shaw, George Bernard, Preface to “ Three Plays by 
Brieux.” 

Sophocles, “ Antigone.” 

Terence, “ Heauton-timorumenos.” 

Ward, Dr. A. W., “A History of English Dramatic 
Literature,” Vol. I. 











INDEX 


^Eschj dus, 32, 94 

Aldric' d> T. B., 129 

Annalt "s du Theatre (1893), 24 

Arche: William, 61, 89 

Aristo phanes, 33 

Aristo tie, 27, 53, 79 

Arnok I2 § 

Augiei r » Emile, 98 

Baker . Geo. P., 85 
Bradle -y> A. C., 14 
Brieux v Eugene, 99, 105 
Browi dng, Robert, 128 
Boissk jr > Gaston, n 
Boucif ^ault, Dion, 42 
Brune tiere, Ferdinand, 24 
Bulwe r-Lytton, 8 

Caldei :on , Pedro, 96 
Calide *sa, 32 
Coleridge, S. T., 26 
Coquedin, B. C., 54 
Croth ers, S. M., 77 
Come die, 96 

D’Anr lunz io, Gabrielle, 101 
Davis Owen, 42 
De Rueda, Lope, 95 
De VGga, Lope, 15 
Dryde n > John, 14 
Duma s, Alex, (fils), 92 
Dumas, Alex, (p£re), 79, 82 

Euripides, 32, 95 


Ferrier, Paul, n 
Fitch, Clyde, 41 

Galsworthy, John, 60, 72, 102 
Goethe, J. W., 15, 26, 53, 96 
Gozzi, Carlo, 95 
Greene, Robert, 38, 96 
Gregory, Lady, 91 

Hagenbach, Karl R., 139 
Hardy, Thos., 131 
Harland, Henry, 132 
Hervieu, Paul, 100 
Homer, 24 

Howells, William Dean, 46 
Hoyle, 13 
Hugo, Victor, 16 

Ibsen, Henrik, 15, 39, 71, 81, 
101 

Isocrates, 14 

James, Henry, 79 
Jameson, Mrs., 56 
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 14 
Jones, Henry Arthur, 41, 102 

Klein, J. L., 18 
Kremer, Theo., 42 

Lemaitre, Jules, 100 
Lessing, K. G., 26, 96 
Lewisohn, Ludwig, 72, 100 
Lyly, John, 38, 96 


INDEX 


i 


i5 2 

* Manzoni, 128 

Marlowe, Christopher, 38, 88, 
96 

Matthews, Brander, 3, 6, 10, 
16, 39, 44, 55, 79, 124, 129 
Menander, 34 
Mitchell, D. G., 3 
Moliere, J. B., 7, 15, 53, 56, 
96, 114 

Moore, Leslie, 132 
Moses, Montrose J., 43, 48 
Musset, Alfred de, 129 

O’Malley, Dr. Austin, 130 
Osborne, Mabel, 133 

Pardie, A. S., 119 
Pinero, Sir Arthur, 41, 102 
Plautus, 36, 81 

Quiller-Couch, Sir Arthur, 96 

Racine, 96 

Rappoport, A. S., 30, 38 
Reid, Christian, 58 
Rinuccini, Octavio, 41 
Rostand, Edmond, 8, 89 


Sachs, Hans, 36 
Saint Thomas Aquinas, 119 
Sarcey, Francisque, 27 
Sardou, Victorien, 82 
Schiller, 26, 96 

Schlegel, A. W., 4, 21, 3 2 > 64 
Scribe, A. E., 41, 98 
Seneca, 34, 36 

Shakespeare, William, 7, 28, 38, 
52, ss, 62, 81, 87, 9b, 115 
Shaw, George Bernard, 7L 99> 
103, 143 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, *28 
Sheridan, Richard, 8, 58 
Sophocles, 32, 53, 95, :o8 
Stendhal, 128 
Stephen, Sir Leslie, 16 
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 26, 57 
Swinburne, Algernon, i:7 

Tennyson, Lord Alfred, 8, 62, 
128 

Terence, 15, 23, 36 

Voltaire, 26 

Ward, Dr. A. W., 13* 

Wilde, Oscar, 102 


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Cranberry Township, PA 16066 


(724) 779-2111 








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